Thin Electronic Wire

On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:51:11 GMT, I said, "Pick a card, any card" and Craig instead replied:

Craig,

If flexibility is not an issue, use wire made for wire-wrapping.

In addition to the wire itself, which has a very small diameter, you will need a cutting and stripping tool.

For flexible wire, do a Google search for AWG28 insulated wire. Any even number from 28 to 40 should yield results for you. eg. AWG30, AWG32 and so on. The higher the number, the smaller the wire diameter. If you want stranded wire for flexibility, make sure to use the term stranded in your search bar.

-- Ray

Brawa make/offer a range of colours of very fine multi-strand wire, the finest I've ever come across - check out their website. I have no idea about US wire sizes, they are all weird!

Greg.P.

Not so weird, Greg. The number refers to how many wires to make a bundle of one inch.

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 20:13:01 -0700, I said, "Pick a card, any card" and "Frank A. Rosenbaum" instead replied:

With Kiwis you have to describe it in terms of sheep. How many strands of virgin wool to an inch, and so forth.

Weird? Yes. Virgin wool is nearly impossible to find in New Zealand.

-- Ray

Craig, Trian Control Systems sell this type of wire go to tcs.com and check it out.

I didn't know that! So I just divide it by 161.29 to get a useful figure?

Greg.P.

That's why Jesus wasn't born in Auckland - they couldn't find three wise men and a virgin...

Craig spake thus:

Don't know where to find it these days, but the stuff they used to wire phonograph arms with is very thin and flexible. (You could rip apart old turntables, I suppose.)

If you are asking me if that figure is correct, I don't know.

Frank

You holidayed here this year???? We went metric back in 1974. Even before that we didn't know what yank wire gauge was.

That would hold true of everywhere you're not bombing and most of the places you are!

Ok, so we're still not sure what US wire gauge is!

It's an oxymoron in Utah.

You're a deadset pie-eater, Greg. How many times do I have to tell you? I'm *not* a Yank. I live on NZ's West Island, formerly trading as Australia. I'm not "bombing" anyone.

Just ask for "thin wire." ;-) Any thing in the range of AWG 24 to 28 is OK. (The larger the number, the finer the wire.)

Actually, you probably have salvageable thin wire around the house, if you are the average packrat.

Wire from old head phone cable is just fine for short flexible connections, as in a locomotive.

The wires in telephone cables are OK if flexibility is not much of an issue.

Atlas and other offer "hook up wire", which is just right for your purpose.

Keep in mind that fine wire has higher resistance, so should be used for short runs of a few inches at most.

You'll also need a good wire stripper, as it's easy to nick or cut through fine wire if using the craft knife to cut the insulation.

HTH

You're partly right.

Increasing gauge numbers give decreasing wire diameters, which is similar to many other non-metric gauging systems. This seemingly-counterintuitive numbering is derived from the fact that the gauge number is related to the number of drawing operations that must be used to produce a given gauge of wire; very fine wire (for example, 30 gauge) requires far more passes through the drawing dies than does 0 gauge wire.

Note that for gauges 5 through about 14, the wire gauge is effectively the number of bare solid wires that, when placed side by side, span 1 inch. That is, 8 gauge is about 1/8 inches in diameter.

Cheers, John

Try e-bay and search for mil spec wire. I have seen 500 foot spools of 28 AWG wire relatively cheap.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

The Weissmans had moved to Miami.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:11:08 +1200, I said, "Pick a card, any card" and Greg Procter instead replied:

What has metric to do with it? It's your brain that can't make the transition regarding wire sizes. They've been in use since long before 1974, Greg. If you didn't know the international wire gauges, that's a personal problem not a global political issue.

-- Ray