copper ribbin wire

[pepa]

i saw a post about using copper ribbon to make coils and desided to play with the idea. being an old construction man and a collecter of (valued) junk, i had a 9" roll of 28ga. copper flashing gathering dust and ready for use. this copper has a very strong plastic coating on both sides and seems to be completely insulated and i thought it would be worth a try as copper wire for coils. it cuts easy with large sissors but it would take to lomg to cut enough strips for enough coils for a stater. so...

by setting the cutters to 1/2" i can get 18 ribbins from the width of the roll fo flashing. i could only cut 5 ribbons at the time because the fixed blades put to much drag on the drill motor that i was turning the gig with, roller cutters would be much better. even with the heavy drag of the blades the ribbons came out nice and strait.

i made a test coil using 30' of ribbon and the legs came out at 1/2". the coil weighs a little more than the 20 turns of 14ga. that i used on another project and the olms were 00.3 for the ribbon coil. hole in center is for 1x2 neos, the coil came out very tight and clean looking. i added some leads to the coil and hooked it up inline with the supply cord on my big 4" belt sander and run a 5 min. test to see if the material would carry the load and not heat up. after five min. i could not feel any diference in temp. by holding the coil in my hand. that big sander pulls a lot of amps.

next i will build the rotors so i can make some real test. all comments welcome, pepa

[pepa]

that first picture was uploaded as 640x480 at 56.5 kb. you will have to go to my file to see it undet copper ribbon cutter, pepa

[adelaide]

looks good  cant weight to see some results  maby compare a standard coil to it as well? the belt sandder at best gess would draw 6 amps at hi volts so u may need to try a bigger load , like few car headlight globes at safer 12 v ? maby some thinner ribbons too?  

[Flux]

Interesting experiment. Not sure if you will have shorts from the burr on the cut edge.

It should be thin enough to avoid eddy currents, be interesting to see how it performs.

If it works there should be a considerable improvement in space factor.

Flux

[wooferhound]

I am also courious about how you are insulating the Edges from shorting out ?

[pepa]

thanks for the replys, the ribbon came off the roller in a large loose coil and i laid it on a piece of plywood and sprayed several coats of quick drying polly on the edges to prevent shorting. after that i tested the edges by burning and cleaning one end to use as a contact for one probe and running the other probe of my meter down the edges to check for shorts and could not find any with this test. after the coil was made i sprayed the whole coil again. if you have a better way to do this testing, i would like to try it. also, any test you would like to see done on this project, let me know thanks, pepa.

[ghurd]

How about heavy duty packing tape on one side of the ribbon? Before coiling.

G-

[pepa]

hi ghurd, that should work but i was trying to get as much copper ,in the coil as i could pack, to keep the coil tight. this is just something i wanted to try and it will be a real cost saving on the cost of copper wire if it works. i have seen this flashing at used builder supply sales for about half the cost of new rolls from a regular builder outlet and it comes in other gages also. the coating on the flashing is as thick and tough as the insulation on regular magnet wire. you have to burn and sand the ends to reach shinny copper for soldering and i believe that the thickness of the coating ( two layers) will keep the copper ribbons apart  to some extent. i will add the packing tape if needed thanks, pepa

[paradigmdesign]

Have you determined the amount of extra copper that you can get into an area by using the tape instead of reg. wire?  It will most likely be hard to get an exact number, unless you make flawless, itentical coils everytime.  I know some of you can create perfect coils, but I can't.

I wonder if you could somehow coat the roll when it is together, with some sort of thin rubber coating, high temp epoxy paint, or maby just a layer of saran wrap attached with spray adhesive.  The saran wrap would most likely melt and burn unless the stator stayed very cool.

[pepa]

my wife got on a weight reducing kick a while back and bought one of those small scales for measuering portions of food, she lost it. i happen to find one just like it in my shop and it does a great job for coil weight measureing. i try to count accuritly when winding but always weight the coils to make sure they are all the same. easy to remove or add wire as needed. someone with more knowledge can probaly tell us how this ribbon will compare to a round wire and what gage it would be if it were round. it is 28gage x one half inch. the coil weighs slightly more than twenty turns of fourteen (i was wrong if i said eighteen in a earlier post) gage wire that i used for some round micros, coil legs and thickness were about the same. i believe that i can solve the cut edge problem by cutting the ribbon into seven/eight inch strips and running it through a gig that would fold  the edges back to within one eight at the center to create a two in hand turn on the coil with finished edges and a little spray poly to seal the cuts. should work, pepa

[Flux]

It looks to be about equivalent to 11AWG, How many turns did you get for your 30ft.

If it doesn't suffer significantly from eddy currents then I think you are on to a good thing. I was on the point of trying this some time ago but I got cold feet about eddy currents after DanB fried the stator for the engine alternator.

In terms of winding space I am sure it is significantly better.

Flux

[willib]

The last time this was brought up , someone suggested using copper tape from a crafts store , i looked it up and there was a bunch of stuff available on the net.

sorry i lost the link.

but the stuff came in different widths and thicknesses , no burrs and some was pre coated with a non conductive coating.

just a little FYI

nice to see the experiment continues , i'm looking forward to the results .

also Pepa ,thats a cool way to cut the foil

[Fiddlehead44]

Very Nice,

    Can you give us some details on your cutter?

Fiddlehead...

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

In a radial flux genny the ribbon will be pretty much edge-on to the mag field, except where it spreads near the gap between magnets.    Spreading isn't very great with a dual-rotor with magnets on both sides or magnets on one and pole pieces on the other, and the eddy currents will tend to straighten the field and limit the spreading (and themselves as well).  So IMHO there shouldn't be a lot of eddy currents with ribbon coils.

[pepa]

hi fiddlehead44, the cutter does work but you could make a lot of improvements on it. something to hold the roll copper flashing inline with tention to keep it from unrolling to fast, a guide on each side to channel the flashing into the blades. i used a piece of 3/4 plywood as the base and 2x4 blocks with pvc pipe for the roll shaft, cut just long enough to hold the roll strait, with small clearence to turn in. the flashing guides are i/4 clear plastic. the cutters are single edge rasor blades with 1/2" spacers. the front roller is another piece of 2" pvc pipe with wood center for center line drive by a 1/2" electric drill. i used 1/2" lag bolts for the shaft with the head cut from the one in the chuck. tape the start of the flashing to the front roller before you set the blades to give even pull across the roll. this cutter was jest threw together form scrap and if these coils work out i will build a good model with power driven blades and it will be made to last. a lot of testing yet,pepa