What material should the Air Core Inductor Coil be made of

[raretesto]

Hello friends

I opened a topic last week
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...-and-tweeter-in-parallel.411688/#post-7659330

I decided to make a 4500 khz crossover. but first I need to make an air core inductor coil. in the link above a friend explained how to do this. my question is what material should the air core inductor coil be made of. copper aluminum tin silver. i have aluminum wire.

I will make a multilayer coil. I made a tool for it on a lathe​

 

[rayma]

Any of those is ok, if the resistance is acceptable. Voice coils are often wound with aluminum wire.
You may have trouble soldering aluminum.

 

[raretesto]

@rayma Does copper or aluminum make a difference in the calculations? Does it affect the number of turns? When I do the calculation in the Coil64 program, it does not ask me what the material will be for multilayer coil construction, but it asks me what material to use for a layered coil with round wires

 

[Osvaldo de Banfield]

The less the resistance, the better. So silver is the best, copper and alyminum are worse in its order. Air core may be considered wood, plastic, glass, porcelain, et cetera as bobbins.

 

[rayma]

@rayma Does copper or aluminum make a difference in the calculations? Does it affect the number of turns? When I do the calculation in the Coil64 program, it does not ask me what the material will be for multilayer coil construction, but it asks me what material to use for a layered coil with round wires

The wire material won't change the inductance, but the program does calculate the series resistance, so it needs to know what the material is.
Do you have a way to test the inductance value?

 

[6sX7]

is that aluminum wire magnet wire? If not, do you have a way to coat it for insulation (an enamel of some sort)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_wire

 

[raretesto]

@6sX7 No, man, this is already enameled copper wire.

 

[Elvee]

Aluminium is OK despite its higher resistivity than copper. In addition, the weight to conductivity ratio is more favorable for Al than for copper, but that's marginal anyway.
Silver is marginally better than copper for the conductivity, but should be mostly comparable regarding weight.
Summary: little to be gained with alternative materials. If carbon -based materials like graphene emerge and can compete, they might become a game-changer, but presently they do not seem like serious contenders.
Rendez-vous in ten years...

 

[bucks bunny]

The core should consist of clean air, no magic smoke🙂