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In Reply to: Yea, you are full of "speculation", pal. (long) posted by cheap-Jack on April 11, 2006 at 13:51:16:
"I do know that my Teflon-insulated, silver-plated copper wires make wonderfully neutral sound."He does not disrespect SPC off-the-cuff like some folks do. What is your beef? Cheers
(BTW, I also find use for SPC cables in my systems)
Follow Ups:
.
Most Teflon-insulated copper wire has silver or nickel plating applied before the Teflon insulation is extruded onto the wire. A cable vendor explained to me a long time ago that this was done because the Teflon extrusion process was too harsh to use on bare copper.The URL link below explains that silver is used to coat stranded copper wire because standard tinning on the strands would melt at the Teflon extrusion temperature. Stranded wire would be, in effect, soldered together into a solid bundle.
Bare copper oxidizes rapidly at higher temperatures, as anyone who has tried to solder it would know. Unless the Teflon extrusion process were done in a reducing atmosphere (hint, this would add a lot of cost to an industrial process), bare copper wire coated with Teflon would have a robust oxide layer on its surface, and be difficult to work with in an industrial context. This is not to say that it can't be done, just that this is why it is not done very much.
The platings are only needed with the TFE teflon, which has to be extruded at a higher temperature than the FEP teflon, the higher temps free some ofm the chlorine/flourine, which can attack the bare copper, while the silver or nickel is more ressitant to the corrosion.The TFE teflon _can_ be extruded under very high pressure, which allows a lower temperature to be used, and thus, bare copper, but the continuous length possible with this process are limited, due to the amount of TFE plastic material that can be loaded into a ram press for the high pressure extrusion process, and of course, it is very expensive to do.
FEP teflon hardly ever causes bare copper corrosion, unless the manufacturing process literally goes out of control.
According to theory, TFE teflon should have a slight advantage over FEP teflon, BUT, it has not been verified under controlled conditions, due to the problems with creating identical conditions for a set of wires using both insulations, and identical conductors.
In the real world of silver plated TFE teflon versus bare copper FEP teflon, neither is perfect, but the flaws and issues of the FEP+bare copper seem to be less irritating long term than those of the TFE+plating. Of course, some folks prefer the sound of the TFE+plating, but my own opinion is that it is not quite as neutral or accurate overall, at least with real world signal sources.
Jon Risch
Thanks for the clarification, Jon.The performance of high-end audio systems is always a balance of physics and taste. Gross flaws due to uncontrolled physical effects can be ameliorated, but taste simply has to be respected. A bottle of Russian River Pinot Noir may be tainted with trichloroanisole from an infected cork, but even a pristine bottle may not be to a particular person's taste if the grapes or the winemaker's methods emphasized the wrong characteristics.
My experience with silver-plated wire is based on military-surplus material. I've tamed the RF noise problems and am happy with the sound. However, this wire is only used for speaker cable in my system; my interconnects use another proprietary wire, and I use power cords made with stranded copper wire. It is certainly possible I would not like the sound of silver-plated copper wire in my interconnects.
Just want to add that a need of plating has been true of PTFE Teflon which has a harsher extrusion process than FEP Teflon which seems to be kinder to bare copper wire. FEP Teflon insulated bare copper has become a more common insulator (I don't know of any corrosion issues). Anyone have more info to share? Does Cardas use PTFE or FEP to insulate their Teflon insulated bare copper wire?
Hi.You are talking to someone who is approved supplier of design/built
fire-rated low capacitance instrumentation cables used in civil aircrafts, e.g. Boeing.I am now working with a flighttest engineer of a worldwide major aircraft builder on a new project for using fine instrumentation cables inside the aircraft wings, as contrary to the normal practice of laying instrumentation cables inside the plane body.
Tinned copper conductors in foam Teflon (FEP) insulation are specified mainly for the moisture corrosion precaution inside the wing voids. "Copper corrosion" by Teflon is news to us.
Also major cable suppliers, like Belden, make tons of LAN cables & instrumentation cables with BARE copper insulated with Teflon FEP.
Obviously, these big boys know better than your cable vendor.May I suggest you to study more whatever relevant subjects before you open your mouth next time. I don't have all the time to set the record straight for you so as not to mislead our readers.
c-J
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