Can I coat my own wire?

[Wisdom Bear]

I have quite a bit of 14 / 12 / 10 wire. It is uncoated. Could I stretch it out a coat it myself? There by saving tons of money on a Ginny or 3

[artv]

Hi hows it going ? where did you get your wire. You can get coated wire from many resources,old tv's, monitors, transformers, I'm sure there are many more............To coat your own wire would not be worth the cause, better to spend your time designing. Everything costs money ,when you have to buy it or make it .  Look at it like this,......scrap wire , scrap magnets,put it on an old wheel , spin it , and make some electricitry......sounds free to me......artv

[Wisdom Bear]

OK I am salvaging wire from other source.
But as I have over 2000 ft of nice copper wire already, why not use it if it can be coated?
Low cost (just cost of coating) and then I put it to good use.

Don't know why I can't coat it with a good heat resistant enamel paint?

But thanks for the reply
Just really didn't answer my question.

[ChrisOlson]

Don't know why I can't coat it with a good heat resistant enamel paint?

The heat resistant enamel will not have a high enough temperature rating, or the proper insulation properties.

So the answer is no.
--
Chris

[fabricator]

Try it, get yourself the best heat resistant enamel paint you can find and paint ten feet or so, then wind it into a good tight coil, then unwrap it and see if there are any places where it rubbed through.

[ChrisOlson]

Try it, get yourself the best heat resistant enamel paint you can find and paint ten feet or so, then wind it into a good tight coil, then unwrap it and see if there are any places where it rubbed through.

You could hook it up to a battery too and see how much smelly smoke you get.  That's a lot more fun.

Mag wire has 200° C insulation and it's usually a polyimide coating, double insulated on the better wire.  And the wire itself is fully annealed, electrolytically refined copper.  It's going to be a little hard to duplicate that with some salvaged wire and spray paint.
--
Chris

[fabricator]

The smoke has to have the right magic smoke smell too, if it don't you aint using the right coating.

[ChrisOlson]

The smoke has to have the right magic smoke smell too, if it don't you aint using the right coating.

That's what my wife says too, and she's a Certified Domestic Food Preparation Engineer.  So she should know.
--
Chris

[Flux]

Let's be realistic about this, coating magnet wire is a difficult process and has been developed and perfected by the wire companies over 150 years, even now they get it wrong. I had a faulty batch some weeks ago that caused a lot of wasted time and money when some components I wound failed.

Do you really think that you can manage this and produce something reliable without having a coating so thick that it wastes half the winding space. If you were making an electric bell or some small non critical item then yest you could do it but for something as stressed as an alternator the reality is no, you are dreaming.

Flux

[tanner0441]

Hi

Another thing to ponder is that a lot of coatings that are put on in a manufacturing process use some very unpleasant solvents, that you would not want to breath, add a continuous heat curing process and it isn't really worth the effort.

Wire which has no lacquer coating is fine for long wire antennas and telephone wires but for coil winding if it was a serious project I would buy new. 60 ft isn't very far, but 60ft up a mast is a long way away when something goes wrong.

Brian.

[dnix71]

Would pickled copper wire insulate well enough?

I had black copper ground wire in wall outlets that required scrapping before it was usable as a ground again. The outlets were simply damp because of poor construction. When I tried installing gfci's they wouldn't set and operate since there was no proper ground because of the corroded wires.

[zap]

Would pickled copper wire insulate well enough?

It might give some insulation but there's not near enough "mechanical" protection.  One slight scrape and you've shorted a turn or two.

[joestue]

LOL
it would be more appropriate to suggest that anodized aluminum would work.. and by all means.. it probably would, for square wire with round edges.. but copper?  lets go back to mechanical properties 102...

there is one application where diy insulation is appropriate.. winding large transformers with low voltage secondaries.