Highly Polished wire????

I use to prep the surface of copper, zinc, brass, and magnesium. We would grind the surface because impurities have a tendency to rise to the surface when casting and rolling the metal. We needed an ultra pure surface so the plates could be used in photo etching. Any and I mean any impurtities or foriegn material that was left on the surface would screw the etch up.

We used silcon carbine and aluminum oxide sanding belts and we use to have to grind with oil because of the flamability of magnesium. We would then clean the surface with water spaying out of jets and a mild detergent. To much detergent would contaminate the surface and too little would not clean the oil off.

I have cast zinc by pouring it in a mold and I have cast tantilin and tungston by casting in a vacuume. The methods used has a huge effect of the purity and the characteristic of the metal. You also can trap other impurities like carbon and oxygen during the casting process.

The tantilin was for compacitors and all the metal I have worked with was always actually a mix of metals. This gave it its best electrical or etching qualities. It might only be one percent zinc in the copper but this all makes a huge difference.

Polishing contacts is different.

_-_-bear

Dan,

Thanks for the kind words. By the way, if you are interested in investigating the company where I once worked, check out their website:

http://www.electroscience.com/index.html

I was in R & D, and developed many products over the years, which I take a lot of pride in the fact that they are listed on the site as current products. My favorite part of the field was designing conductors and resistors. Some of our customers were Vishay, Dale, CTS, Sprague, Ohmite, NTK, Bosch - suppliers to the high end industry.

While most of the things I dealt with were precious metals, I am not a jeweler, so my ideas about polishing wire may be way off base. However, as I did quite a lot of wirebonding(you know, the hairlike connections in a microchip from the actual chip to the leads) and microwelding. So, I got to buy a lot of aluminum, silver, gold, and platinum wire. Which is probably the reason why I am so virulently opposed to expensive audio cables. Believe me, even when we pay $100/m for a silver interconnect we are absolutely being taken to the cleaners. If I told you how much I could put together a set of gold interconnects for, we would all be crying.

As I am not a jeweler, I come from a different perspective as to how suitable a material is for the purpose of polishing a wire for high end audio applications. I will say that the composition of jeweler's rouge should be ascertained so as to be able to best remove its residue from the wire.

Obviously, there is a danger in "fixing something that isn't broken". By that I mean that if a wire is in good condition from the get go, one could muck things up by going about this business. I would say there would be something to act as a carrier in the composition, such as a polymer and solvent vehicle(be they both natural or synthetic). Once those ingredients are known, I would be able to recommend how to remove whatever residue is left.

In terms of abrasives, zirconia(zirconium oxide), tungsten carbide, or alumina(aluminum oxide) would all seem fine. What is a surprise to most people is that metals are pretty soft, especially in comparison to ceramics(oxides, carbides, nitrides, etc.) But, in order to obtain the type of polish you would be after, one would have to cascade the grit of abrasive. Progressively moving to finer and finer grits. I know from metal and furniture polishing that 400 and 600 grits leave a very smooth finish. 600 grit would be better.

But, is sanding wire a good thing? I think the starting point of the wire is the most important factor. If one were to buy very high grade silver or copper, and its surface appeared good, leave it alone. Maybe just treat it chemically(acetone, xylene, a glycol ether acetate, etc.) to remove any organic matter which had accumulated via handling.

Finally, perhaps Kondo - san from Audio Note knows best. He developed a way to draw the silver wire through the diamond dies during the wire's manufacture which in his view sounds best. To him, like many people's view of the initial audio signal, things must be perfect from their inception, once lost, it can never be regained.

GOOD LUCK!

Trelja,

Thanks again for the informative post. I went and looked at Audio Notes web site and I noticed they sell 99.99% wire. Yet there are those here and on other sites that insist that a higher purity wire is the best like 99.999 or 99.9999. What is your opinion about this?

- Dan

Dan, Trelja-- gotta' agree, Trelja's posts are excellent. Thanks for sharing Joe. I only "clean" the exposed portion of wires if there is apparent oxidation/corrosion, and then only the ends making contact.

As noted, I use 400 grit sandpaper or emery cloth, and then only when it's apparent that the contacts actually need cleaning. For lighter, routine cleaning, I use the contact cleaner sold by Sonic Frontiers, and following chemical cleaning, my system always seems to sound better.

It has finally (Duuuhhh) occurred to me that you are talking about polishing the whole wire (not just cleaning the contacts)? And, of course, that is an entirely different matter. Craig