Magnet wire
wire with thin layer of insulation, for construction of coils
Magnet wire or enameled wire is a copper or aluminium wire coated with a very thin layer of insulation. It is used in the construction of transformers, inductors, motors, generators,
speakers, headphones, hard disk head actuators, electromagnets, electric guitar pickups, and other applications that require tight coils of insulated wire.
The wire itself is most often fully annealed, electrolytically refined copper. Aluminium magnet wire is sometimes used for large transformers and motors. The insulation is typically made of tough polymer film materials rather than vitreous enamel, as the name might suggest.
Construction
The most suitable materials for magnet wire applications are unalloyed pure metals, particularly copper. When factors such as chemical, physical, and mechanical property requirements are considered, copper is considered the first choice conductor for magnet wire.
Most often, magnet wire is composed of fully annealed, electrolytically refined copper to allow closer winding when making electromagnetic coils. High-purity oxygen-free copper grades are used for high-temperature applications in reducing atmospheres or in motors or generators cooled by hydrogen gas.
Aluminium magnet wire is sometimes used as an alternative for large transformers and motors, mainly for economical reasons.
“Magnet wire” enters the record as wire with thin layer of insulation, for construction of coils. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Magnet, wire and thin can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Magnet wire” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.