Re: copper, quality in cables

"Better Ingredients, Better Pizza"..... Poppa John's

Sales talk is pretty much universal.

Even for Cat5e cables.....

Unbelievable.

Jim Buch

Weeeelll ....sort of. Standard copper is 99.9 %, good enough to qualify for London Metal Exchange . Much copper is actually refined to 99.99 %, and this goes for a small premium. Maybe $ 50 a tonne or so. Wire rod, used as the basic material for drawing wire from, is almost always that 99.99 % . So it is in fact, both " better than normal copper " and also " standard " . Which is about as confusing as I want to make it on a Saturday afternoon.

Tim Worstall

Uncle Al's comments are good, and a lot of sales hype goes into the business, especially audio. If there is a real problem, chances are it is with the connector(s). They are put on by machine, and cheaper suppliers will not always calibrate and test properly. Also, In order to attain certain physical properties, such as stiffness and memory(springiness), alloying metals are used. The cheaper suppliers will use El Cheapo recycled brass. Herein lies a problem. The gov't has been going after lead-containing brasses, which are favored for certain machining operations because it makes the brass easier to cut. So many brass suppliers are offering bismuth containing brasses as a replacement. I was at an engineering conference where some engineers were complaining that even a few ppm of bismuth would reduce the electrical transmission properties of copper drastically. So, sales hype aside, it pays to buy a quality product. Belden is one of them, and everything I've bought from them is first class.-Jitney