Wick Wind. Possible?

[DadHav]

Hey Gang, I'm sure there has to be many reasons why this won't work, but would it be posible to make a wind using braided copper like solder wick? Can you wind almost over the top of each other. That to me sounds lik a "maybe Not" Of course you would need to wrap an insulation with it. This is ten turns which looks like it would make a good 6 leg LRK wind. This all equates to a bad idea, Right?
Happy motoring
John

[LBMiller5]

Hi John,

If you have ever looked inside a drill or R/C Car motor, you would notice that a material very similar to solder braid is used to connect the motor solder tabs to the brushes. The difference is that solder braid has a coating of rosin based flux imbedded into it to make it attract solder more readily. I have a roll of the solder braid here, it is the .10" wide variety. I pulled apart a small piece about 1/4" long and counted about 94 or 95 individual strands that were somewhere between .002" and .003" in diameter. This would make the individual strands somewhere around 40ga to 42ga wire. If we assume that it is .003" dia, the wire has 9 circular mils. Taking 9 times 95 strands gives us 855 circular mils of wire, which is equivilent to 21ga wire.

From earlier discussions, we have found that our motors routinely operate in the 50-70 circular mill per amp range which would give a current carrying capacity of this wire in the 12-17 amp range. Now this is "per phase" current which would equate to a maximum total motor current in the 28 to 40 amp range!

So yes, you could use this to wind a very hot motor stator, providing you took all the necessary precautions to insure that the wire was insulated properly. There is a special tape made specifically for this purpose. It goes by the trade name "Kapton". It is amber yellow in color and has a very high temperature rating. It comes in a variety of widths, and in addition to many other uses, it is used as an extra insulation barrier when winding high voltage transformers. It is not cheap though, a 1/2" wide roll about 100' long runs $15.00-$20.00.

Using this to wind a 9-10 turn stator would be equivelent to winding 95 parallel strands of 42ga wire so it would be possible to get a really hot motor, but you would have to be insanely careful to avoid shorts everywhere in the motor. Insulate the stator, insulate between every turn, and heatshrink over the start and end tails.

Have fun, and let me know how it turns out!

Lucien

[ScubaSteve]

Similar to litz wire... Very interested to see how this turns out. Insulating it I imagine is going to be a NIGHTMARE... :? :wink:

[DadHav]

Hi Lucien, Steve, How do you flat wind a stator. With Vallium and a magnefying visor. Thanks for the very encouraging numbers Lucien. This makes it look worth a try. Oh Man: The Kapton: I wish I wouldn't have uset what I had to wrap up battery packs. I never figured on this flat wind thing. I've heard mention of Litz wire. Would that be something more practical to look into. Lucien, I liked the amber color on the battery packs.
Thanks Guys,

[DadHav]

OK, I remember now. High frequency travels over the conductors serface, rather than through it.
There should be a bunch of litz wire laying around somplace radio radio frequency stuff, No?
John.