How good should a tinkering wire to solder on prototyping boards be?
IMHO
-it should be available at least in the 10 rainbow colors of the resistor code
-it should be copper and not copper claded aluminium
-it should be flexible, but not too flexible so to be easy to put in place for soldering
-least, but not last, the insulation plastic should retract a bit under heat, so one can prepare the end just with the soldering iron and a bit of tin bypassing the annoying stripping of the insulation.
I must say to buy today a wire with these characteristics is quite difficult, mostly what they sell today is of rather bad quality, not to say crap.
I get my best tinkering wires from old computer cables to parallel printers, from the good old time where cables were made of copper...
I just strip the sleeve, recycle the braid and use the individual wires for tinkering.
Mainly I get these cables for free at the municipal recycling dump.
-least, but not last, the insulation plastic should retract a bit under heat, so one can prepare the end just with the soldering iron and a bit of tin bypassing the annoying stripping of the insulation.
I disagree. A soldering iron is for soldering, not stripping back insulation. I favour silicone insulated wire for that very reason. It is very heat resistant and does not shrink back when being tinned or soldered. I do, however, find it difficult to find in a larger range of colours.
I work in telecoms, and as such have access to almost unlimited telephone cable. I find the wire from telephone cable perfect for general messing about, and it is just the right size for breadboard without needing any kind of pin on the end.
It should be copper and not copper claded aluminium
CCA is awful, horrible stuff. CCS (steel) is even worse. Still, we've made quite a bit of money ripping out CCA network cable and replacing it with proper cat 5
UKHeliBob:
I disagree. A soldering iron is for soldering, not stripping back insulation.
You should see it in practice. Just approach the tip of the iron to the cable and it retracts by ~2mm.
I don't smear the tip with plastic. It makes really neat, clean solderings without needing to strip wires.
Sorry, but that is not "neat, clean soldering" it is ugly and I could not bring myself to having the "stripped" wire ends looking like that, however temporary the connections are. Strip the silicone insulation back the required amount, twist the wire to prevent loose strands, tin the now twisted wire end and solder it to the pad/pin/whatever
Cat3 four conductor telephone wire because many years ago I got a 1,000' spool. A little bit larger solid hookup wire is good as it fits in pin headers nicely.
zoomkat:
Cat3 four conductor telephone wire because many years ago I got a 1,000' spool. A little bit larger solid hookup wire is good as it fits in pin headers nicely.
I used to use cat4 wires as well, but it just lacks the number of colours to make complex wirings clear and easily followable.
RIN67630:
I used to use cat4 wires as well, but it just lacks the number of colours to make complex wirings clear and easily followable.
There are 10 colours used in telephone cables (I know the power industry uses the same colours for control cables, or so my brother informed me), they are:
Blue, orange, green, brown, slate (grey)
White, red, black, yellow, violet.
You need to get multi-pair cable to get all 10.
Is that enough?
I use a lot of solid core networking and telco cable wire. Cat5cable has 8 differently colored wire, which isn’t bad, although I’d prefer solid colors instead of the stripes. I also have some 50wire riser cable, which shows why you need the stripes!
Also nice is rainbow ribbon cable, if you can find a reasonable deal.
westfw:
I use a lot of solid core networking and telco cable wire. Cat5cable has 8 differently colored wire, which isn’t bad, although I’d prefer solid colors instead of the stripes. I also have some 50wire riser cable, which shows why you need the stripes!
Telephone cable used to be made with solid colours only, before the manufacturing process was improved to put 2 colours on each wire. As the wires were in pairs you had
Blue with white
Orange with white
Green with white
etc
You had to carefully tease apart the pairs, making sure you didn't mix up the whites so they were kept with their respective colours. It's a lot easier now with them marked in both the colour and the white.
PerryBebbington:
Also nice is rainbow ribbon cable, if you can find a reasonable deal.
I made some bad experience with them:
-mostly: too hard plastic, too thin wires, CCA, what they use to sell with DuPont pins. Boooo!
-on another roll: the rainbow wires were coated over with transparent plastic: no way to separate the wires easily...
Examples of soldering small (26AWG) and larger (14AWG) silicone insulated wires to a PCB
Preventing the insulation of the larger wires melting back is particularly important as soldering them takes a fair amount of heat
Quite apart from any practical considerations it look much nicer than a melted mess of plastic insulation
Having worked for years with Telco wire, I will also that the 25 Pair telco cable (solid 24AWG) is near perfect. Always use a good stripper, not something that will nick the wire. Always use Solid Copper wire.
Best to avoid stranded with breadboards, since eventually, the solder (tinned end) will suffer mechanical weakness and just crinkle into an end that just won't insert into a hole.
30 AWG is a horrible recommendation.
Don't be tempted to use CAT-5 ethernet wire, as it is often 26 AWG and just a bit too wimpy. (Note: It DOES use the same basic color coding as TELCO wire)
If you are extremely lucky, you can find 50 pair 22 AWG wire.
