Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> At 04:35 PM 2/17/2007, Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: "earl rhodes" <earl_1975@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> hi allthank you for your replys i was under the impression that gold was of a lower resistance (the tags on computer equiment) but obviosly thats not the case!
gold has several advantages.. it doesn't corrode (at all)...it's easy to solder to (because it doesn't corrode.. most pure metals solder just fine, it's the oxides that don't solder well). It's a pretty good conductor both thermally and electrically. It has a high melting point. It looks good. It has high emissivity and is a good IR reflector (good for those of us designing things that need to go into space).
though i still would like to use pure gold wire one word says it all ""bling " very nice !though thinner wire would be the choice around .2 mm thttp://www.youtube.com/user/teslaspigeonhe reason being power consumtion and cost i plan to attend uk tesla oriented events and obviosly something different may be required to turn heads ! im the artistic type always have been ,im not bothered about a couple of ohms ! hell i dont have a meter of any type !the wire links will come in very handy i might just do a gold plated one ! first ! and try to get somebody else to pay for the pure gold one ( im not that stupid)or go halfers with someone! whatever !! at least i can think about something else now thanks very much !
Give MWS a call.. they do almost anything, although it might cost you a bit. There are probably other suppliers around the world (MWS is about a mile from where I live, so I've been there more often than other wire mfrs). From an appearance standpoint, it should be possible to get a very thin gold plating flashed onto almost anything (i.e. they do it for component leads and PC boards).
You could also get a copper tubing primary gold plated fairly cheaply, and that would look very nice. The topload would be the challenge.. You can get an aluminum or steel toroid for plating fairly easily, but I think you might need a fairly thick layer of gold to prevent it blasting off from the sparks. Getting a thin layer evaporated on would be easy, but I don't know if it would be durable enough. You can get a iridite type chemical conversion coating on aluminum that looks pretty good, but, it's just not gold.
If you want to carry the gold theme through, you also ought to consider using red glass (which uses colloidal gold as the metal to color it) for things like supports, etc. Any stained glass place can probably supply it.
WHen it comes right down to it, an awful lot of tesla coils are built essentially as show pieces and works of art. No question, a gold one would be cool. (I'm sure you've seen photos of Finn's copper toroids at a high polish?)