Copper Conductor Basics

Copper Conductor Basics 

Copper conductor consists of a single copper wire or multiple copper wires, respectively, as follows:

● Hard Copper Wire: Cold processed by stretching wire, with high tensile strength, suitable for overhead transmission lines, power distribution lines and building line conductors.

● Soft copper wire: hard copper wire heated to remove the residual stresses generated by the cooling process and become, rich in flexibility and bendability, and has a high electrical conductivity, used in the manufacture of communication and power cable conductors, electrical machinery and a variety of household appliances conductor.

● Semi-hard copper wire: tensile strength between hard copper wire and soft copper wire, used for tying of overhead wires and wiring of radios.

● Tinned copper wire: The surface of copper wire is tinned to increase solderability and to protect the copper conductor from erosion when extruded from PVC or rubber insulation, and to prevent the aging of rubber insulation.

● Flat copper wire: Copper wire with square or rectangular cross-section, which is used for the manufacturing of large transformers or large motors and other induction coils.

● Oxygen-free copper wire: copper wire with an oxygen content of less than 0.001% and a high degree of purity, with a copper content of 99.99% or more, which will not be embrittled by oxygen, and is used to make wires for vacuum tubes, semiconductor parts, and very fine wires.

● Enameled wire: copper wire softened, coated with insulating varnish, heated and baked to become, generally divided into natural resin and synthetic resin enameled wire.

● Copper Foil Wire: A conductor made of flat and very thin copper wire coiled around a fiber wire.

● Stranded and then plated wire: unplated copper wire is stranded and then plated with aluminum.

● Copper-clad steel: Generally used for coaxial line for signal transmission (such as the connection between TV and VCD, outdoor TV antenna, CCTV, etc.); it has higher tensile strength than hard wire, and it is used as overhead line in high mountainous areas, across rivers, etc. It is generally classified into 21%, 30%, and 40% of electrical conductivity according to the thickness of its copper.

● Alloy copper: Composed of copper and other conductor metals, such as copper-nickel alloys, used for special-purpose wires.

Commonly conductor :

The main types of conductors in common use today are as follows:

● Tinned copper wire, abbreviated as TC; 

● Bare copper wire, abbreviated as BC; 

● Silver-plated copper wire, abbreviated as SC; 

● Silver-plated copper-clad steel, abbreviated as SCCS; 

● Copper-clad steel, abbreviated as CP.

Copper Wire Properties

By resistivity (the size of the resistance value of a material with a length of 1m and a cross-sectional area of 1mm²), we generally classify materials into three categories: Conductors, semiconductors, insulators.

Currently commonly used metal conductors are gold, silver, copper, etc. Considering the price and conductivity of the conductor, the most commonly used is the copper conductor.

Conductor resistance: The resistance of a conductor is directly proportional to its length and inversely proportional to its cross-sectional area.

Conductivity: 20 ℃ when the length of 1 m, cross-sectional area of 1 mm2 of the standard soft copper wire resistance 1/58ohm (0.017241 ohm) as a benchmark, known as 100% conductivity. The greater the resistance, the lower the conductivity, both inversely proportional.

Bending resistance: one end of a single line is fixed, the other end plus the weight of the vertical down, and then back and forth 180 bending until the line breaks, the more the number of times of bending, that is, the stronger the bending resistance.

Tensile force: tensile test, applied to the specimen and make it break the maximum load weight or force.

Tensile strength: tensile test, make the specimen break, the unit area of the tensile force.

Elongation: In the specified standard distance, the specimen by the elongation to break the length of the increase in length and the ratio of the original length.

Conductor at different temperatures will have different impedance, generally often 20 ℃ or 25 ℃ as a standard, the higher the temperature, the greater the impedance will be.

AWG

AWG (American wire gauge) is a standard for distinguishing the diameter of wire, also known as Brown & Sharpe wire gauge. This standardized wire gauge system has been in use in the United States since 1857.

AWG in front of the value (such as 24AWG, 26AWG) indicates that the wire to form the final diameter before the number of holes to go through, the larger the value, the more holes the wire passes through, the smaller the diameter of the wire.

Thicker wires have better physical strength and lower resistance, but the thicker the wire, the more copper is needed to make the cable, which makes it heavier, more difficult to install, and more expensive. The challenge in cable design is to use the smallest diameter wire possible (reducing cost and installation complexity) while maximizing the capacity of the wire at the necessary voltage and frequency.

In the wire and cable industry, UL758 specification inside the specification of the conductor specification standards in detail, it is the standard for the above said AWG, is the American Wire Guage, that is, the cable companies refer to the standard, which is divided into a single copper conductor (a single copper conductor) and stranded copper (multiple copper conductor stranded copper conductor), a single copper according to the size of the diameter of the division specifications; stranded copper according to the size of the cross-section of the division of the specifications, the following table shows:

By HornmicLink_Bob Kuo @230724 17:30