Re: Flat Ribbon Conductors

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Flat Ribbon Conductors
From: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-jpl.nasa.gov> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 16:20:41 -0600
Approved: twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net
Delivered-To: fixup-tesla-at-pupman-dot-com-at-fixme

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Friday, May 05, 2000 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: Flat Ribbon Conductors

>Original Poster: Hollmike-at-aol-dot-com
>
>In a message dated 5/5/2000 8:27:39 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
>tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:
>
>> I've personally not tried aluminum but others with more experience have
>>  pointed out that aluminum has a very high resistance oxide coating that
>>  makes its resistance at RF frequencies undesirable.  Others still have
used
>>  it and it worked, but probably not as well as any good copper primary.
>>
>If one wished to go to the trouble, aluminum can be strike plated with
nickel
>and then silver plated.  This would fix the high resistance problem.  On
the
>other hand, I have seen a primary made from the aluminum flashing thaat
>worked as well as any coils I have seen.
>   Mike

Given the fairly thick skin depth for tesla coil frequencies, I don't know
that a thin silver plating would help much, and nickel isn't all that great
as a conductor (it's used as resistance wire, for instance).. conducts just
enough to be lossy. Also, it is magnetic, which would probably have all
sorts of horrible effects on the skin depth thing, because skin depth
depends on both permeability and conductivity.

   Aluminum has about 60% of the conductivity of copper, so just make your
aluminum component twice the diameter/width/thickness/etc, and you'll be
ahead of the game.