Tinsel wire is a type of

electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

wire Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm A wire is a flexible strand of metal. Wire is c ...

used for applications that require high mechanical flexibility but low current-carrying capacity. Tinsel wire is commonly used in cords of

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

handset A handset is a component of a telephone that a user holds to the ear and mouth to receive audio through the receiver and speak to the remote party using the built-in transmitter. In earlier telephones, the transmitter was mounted directly on ...

s, headphones, and small electrical appliances. It is far more resistant to

metal fatigue In materials science, fatigue is the initiation and propagation of cracks in a material due to cyclic loading. Once a fatigue crack has initiated, it grows a small amount with each loading cycle, typically producing striations on some parts o ...

failure than either stranded wire or solid wire.

Construction

Tinsel wire is produced by wrapping several strands of thin metal

foil Foil may refer to: Materials * Foil (metal), a quite thin sheet of metal, usually manufactured with a rolling mill machine * Metal leaf, a very thin sheet of decorative metal * Aluminium foil, a type of wrapping for food * Tin foil, metal foil ...

around a flexible nylon or

textile Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

core. Because the foil is very thin, the

bend radius Bend radius, which is measured to the inside curvature, is the minimum radius one can bend a pipe, tube, sheet, cable or hose without kinking it, damaging it, or shortening its life. The ''smaller'' the bend radius, the ''greater'' the material ...

imposed on the foil is much greater than the thickness of the foil, leading to a low probability of

. Meanwhile, the core provides high

tensile strength Ultimate tensile strength (UTS), often shortened to tensile strength (TS), ultimate strength, or F_\text within equations, is the maximum stress that a material can withstand while being stretched or pulled before breaking. In brittle materials t ...

without impairing flexibility. Typically, multiple tinsel wires are jacketed with an insulating layer to form one conductor. A cord is formed from several conductors in either a round profile or a flat cable.

Connections

Tinsel wire is commonly connected to equipment with crimped terminal lugs that pierce the insulation to make contact with the metal ribbons, rather than stripping insulation. Separated from the core, the individual ribbons are relatively fragile, and the core can be damaged by high temperatures. These factors make it difficult or impractical to terminate tinsel wire by

soldering Soldering (; ) is a process in which two or more items are joined by melting and putting a filler metal (solder) into the joint, the filler metal having a lower melting point than the adjoining metal. Unlike welding, soldering does not involv ...

during equipment manufacture, although soldering is possible, with some difficulty, to repair a failed connection. However, the conductors tend to break at their junction with the rigid solder.

Applications

Tinsel wires or cords are used for telephony and audio applications in which frequent

bending In applied mechanics, bending (also known as flexure) characterizes the behavior of a slender structural element subjected to an external load applied perpendicularly to a longitudinal axis of the element. The structural element is assumed to ...

of electric cords occurs, such as for

headsets Headset may refer to: * Headset (audio), audio headphone(s), particularly with an attached microphone * Head Set (band), an American alternative rock band * Headset (bicycle part), a bicycle part that connects the fork to the frame * Head-mounte ...

and telephone handsets. It is also used in power cords for small appliances such as electric shavers or clocks, where stranded cable conductors of adequate mechanical size would be too stiff.G. F. Moore (ed) ''Electric cables handbook third edition'',Blackwell Science,1997 , page 234 Tinsel cords are recognized as type TPT or TST in the US and Canadian electrical codes, and are rated at 0.5 amperes.

References

Electrical wiring Telephony equipment {{electronics-stub

Construction

Connections

Applications

See also

References