wire questions. good source of wire??

[loss1234]

please. i need to find a company that sells good wire but not too much. i need stranded and solid 22 /24 gauge. pretinned maybe?

at radio shack they sell 100' rolls of untinned for about 8 bucks. mousers 100 foot rolls are around 18-23 dollars. is their wire way better?

i have a real tough time using stranded with any project that has to fit through breadboard holes so i avoid it until the project is being made on perfboard. so i guess i use solid a lot. but some brands seem to break more than others.

thanks as usual

[guitarfool]

Try SmallBear

http://www.smallbearelec.com/home.html

Go to "Stock List", "Wire", second page.

http://www.smallbearelec.com/Categories.bok?category=Wire+And+Cable&searchpath=11715&start=9&total=13

He has mil grade 24 AWG in all diferent colors, 5 bucks for 50 ft. It's really good - the only thing I use anymore.

Hope this helps,

Jeff

[loss1234]

thanks alot

looks like a great deal!!

[goodrevdoc]

+1 for steve @ smallbears wire. Semi rigid, available in 10 colors, and way more forgiving than Rat Shack wire WRT insulation and your soldering iron tip...
-justin

[factus10]

All Electronics has good prices on wire

[loss1234]

but is it bonded?

dan

[factus10]

Bonded? Do you mean pre-tinned? No, it's not.

[loss1234]

i am not sure if pretinned is the same. what bonded means is that the strands are almost glued together (through the whole wire) so that it is VERY easy to thread (even on breadboards) through a hole -which is NOT the case with regular stranded where the wire strands bend all over the place, for instance when trying to thread a piece of wire through a tiny pcb hole.


this wire from small bear has really made me convert to pre-bonded stranded. now i prefer it to solid in ALL cases.

maybe i will just get it from small bear

[Danno Gee Ray]

Why not just use stranded wire which you have tinned at the end before inserting into the pcb hole?

[para]

for breadboarding use solid core 22 or 24awg

i've had some pretinned stuff ( still have a LOT of it) that is just too brittle for me to work with. it breaks pretty easily, i just grabbed some of the allelectronic stuff to test it and its pretinned but each strand is pretinned individually, so far not brittle at all, digging it. i usually use the jameco stuff and tin it myself as i work

steven

[factus10]

[loss1234]

hmmm.. for those of you who havent tried the small bear wire, do yourself a favor. tinning my own wire seems to slow me down. and this wire is so strong and unbrittle, never breaks, great colors, etc. i sound like an ad but its true, i hated stranded before this wire!!

i think i answered my own question.

thanks

[frijitz]

IMO, you should *always* pre-tin any wires, leads or posts you are soldering. It actually saves you time, because the soldering goes faster, and you avoid possible bad solder joints. This is especially important nowadays with the ROHAS materials -- you never know what your leads are covered with, and many of them have rather poor wetability.



Ian

[para]

i grabbed this for bread boarding and could not be happier, just cut it all to whatever length you need and make a pile of pots with longish leads on them so breadboarding so very quickly


http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/22TW-400/search/22_GA_SOLID,_TWISTED_PAIR,_400_FT_.html


right Ian but i've had some pretinned wire that just takes solder so well it saves a lot of time when you do pretin to make sure its prep'ed, and i think that is what loss is talking about? last time i looked at small bear they were out so i moved on. i'll give it a try though

this is the stuff from allelectronics that is pretinned and stranded and it takes solder incredibly well.... so far.

http://www.allelectronics.com/matrix/Hook_Up_100.html


steven

[loss1234]

thanks for the tip on pretinning. i had heard about it but i wasnt sure if i needed to do it with solid core or with stranded only.

if itll make things easier, i will try it.