Speaker cables

[J!m]

I finally got a chance to clean and straighten out the Drumgeon a bit today. Found my speakers and their cables behind the crap…


Made from Swiss plasma gun power cable stock- silver plated copper strands (a lot of them) in a regular rope twist with an outer Chinese finger puzzle finish. Covered with clear shrink tubing. That is a single cable in my hand. Cable came from the scrap bin where I used to work…

 

[Lazarus Short]

Cool...how do they sound?

 

[J!m]

Expensive…

they’re only 24” long so “resistance is futile”.

 

[Lazarus Short]

Two feet? That fairly begs for monoblocks.

 

[NeverSatisfied]

Cable came from the scrap bin where I used to work…

One man’s scrap is another man’s treasure. Audio treasures are the best.

 

[J!m]

Two feet? That fairly begs for monoblocks.

It certainly does!

 

[wattsabundant]

The Chinese finger puzzle is the typical shield on shielded cable. I guess I don’t understand this cable. Is it single conductor. If so why the shield? The image only shows a fork lug. Is that the inner conductor?

 

[mr_rye89]

I wish people would leave crap like that in my dumpster. I thought I struck gold when I found some 50’ 12 and 14 awg extension cords with bad ends in the dumpster at work. One of those cords became speaker cables……

 

[J!m]

This cable goes inside a water hose for cooling. The outer braid keeps the inner braid together- the gun at the end of these cables is moving around to do the spray work and the typical crimp termination is where the strands start breaking.

The inner cable has to be stretched too, because leaving it loose it can nest at the end and reduce water flow.

The American vession is tin plated, and doesn’t have the outer braid on it. The Swiss one is better!

 

[Mohawk]

 

[J!m]

I forgot to mention: the water cooling is for the plasma gun, but, it also allows this "small" cable to carry 1200 amps DC, which otherwise requires three 4-0 copper cables without cooling.

 

[George S.]

Jim, what's the plasma gun used for. Cutting?

 

[J!m]

Not intentionally, no. But a few very expensive parts have been scrapped when a turntable fails and the gun dwells in one spot...

We take powdered metal, ceramic, cermets and carbide/matrix and inject it into the plasma effluent, which heats it a bit and accelerates it toward the prepared surface. There it sticks (if we did it right), builds up and can then be used as-is, machined or ground to final dimension and surface finish.

Airplanes would not fly if not for thermal spray coatings. They are heavily relied upon and designed around.

So, you can take a soft aluminum part and apply a tungsten carbide coating to a wear location and the nice light part outperforms tool steel in the same location. That's just one example...

 

[NeverSatisfied]

Not intentionally, no. But a few very expensive parts have been scrapped when a turntable fails and the gun dwells in one spot...

We take powdered metal, ceramic, cermets and carbide/matrix and inject it into the plasma effluent, which heats it a bit and accelerates it toward the prepared surface. There it sticks (if we did it right), builds up and can then be used as-is, machined or ground to final dimension and surface finish.

Airplanes would not fly if not for thermal spray coatings. They are heavily relied upon and designed around.

So, you can take a soft aluminum part and apply a tungsten carbide coating to a wear location and the nice light part outperforms tool steel in the same location. That's just one example...

That’s really cool, any chance that technology could be used in audio, like coating speaker cones to make them more ridged ?

 

[laatsch55]

Not intentionally, no. But a few very expensive parts have been scrapped when a turntable fails and the gun dwells in one spot...

We take powdered metal, ceramic, cermets and carbide/matrix and inject it into the plasma effluent, which heats it a bit and accelerates it toward the prepared surface. There it sticks (if we did it right), builds up and can then be used as-is, machined or ground to final dimension and surface finish.

Airplanes would not fly if not for thermal spray coatings. They are heavily relied upon and designed around.

So, you can take a soft aluminum part and apply a tungsten carbide coating to a wear location and the nice light part outperforms tool steel in the same location. That's just one example...

So like an esoteric spray metal operation?

 

[D-500 Flogger]

Not intentionally, no. But a few very expensive parts have been scrapped when a turntable fails and the gun dwells in one spot...

We take powdered metal, ceramic, cermets and carbide/matrix and inject it into the plasma effluent, which heats it a bit and accelerates it toward the prepared surface. There it sticks (if we did it right), builds up and can then be used as-is, machined or ground to final dimension and surface finish.

Airplanes would not fly if not for thermal spray coatings. They are heavily relied upon and designed around.

So, you can take a soft aluminum part and apply a tungsten carbide coating to a wear location and the nice light part outperforms tool steel in the same location. That's just one example...

J!m,

Is this the source of the coating on the 'tail feathers' that the F-16 opens for idle, squeezes down during full mil (& opens back up for max afterburner) operation?

I was always curious about the source of that coating that can take that kind of concentrated thermal stress & shrug it off...

 

[J!m]

Yeah, we coat those flaps.

We use high energy plasma for that. The horrible console with the really poor mass flow controller implementation I’m constantly fixing… that has three power supplies and three electrodes and the powder is injected axially.

 

[D-500 Flogger]

...We take powdered metal, ceramic, cermets and carbide/matrix and inject it into the plasma effluent, which heats it a bit and accelerates it toward the prepared surface. There it sticks (if we did it right), builds up and can then be used as-is, machined or ground to final dimension and surface finish.

Airplanes would not fly if not for thermal spray coatings. They are heavily relied upon and designed around.

J!m may be describing thermal spray coatings -- but here he speaks the unvarnished truth.

Previously I asked if J!m's operation were the ones coating our F-16's engine tail feathers, and he replied in the affirmative. If you haven't seen what those coatings must contain, check out this pyromaniacs delight showing early evening full afterburner takeoffs:

Here's a close up. No soot, burns hot & clean. (This is the classic 'Italian Tune Up' taken to the next level... :0)


One of my old Block 25 (P&W) gray gals, big picture photo where you can see how the tail feathers look at rest.



My plane + your P&W engine bits = Tip of the Spear. Our mission was to provide non-stop protection for the troops on the ground.

Needless to say, it takes more than a village to make these complex machines work as advertised. Allow me to stop here & thank you for your contributions to keeping my pilots safe during their sorties. Excellence is appreciated. And your speaker cables were part of the scrap from this support activity? They must kick some serious silver-plated-copper @$$!
:0)

Small world, ain't it?

Cheers --

3D

 

[Lazarus Short]

There's really no telling where a simply titled thread on this site will take you...

 

[J!m]

I should have mentioned we also coat the inside of the augmentor- that white barrel in front of the flaps. That get Yttria stabilized Zirconia top coat to keep from melting.

We coated one yesterday in fact. I’ll see if I can get some pictures and then 3D can show where they go.