Mohrenberg Silicon Wire Review (image heavy)

Silicon wire
I know there have been concerns about the thickness of the insulation of Mohrenberg's silicon wire, I thought I might tests the concerns as well as the claims of Mohrenberg.

first, is the wire flexible?

yes...

is the wire heat resistant?

conductors are red hot from the incredibly hot arc


conductors have fuse into a ball but the insulation is still fine


insulation on fire (sorry for the image quality, i was in a bit of a rush to put the fire out)

The wire is incredibly resistant to heat. The insulation survived intensely hot arc of electricity, even when the conductors had melted almost all the way down to it. However, after the open flame surrounding the arc had made contact with the insulation, the silicon rubber burst into flames and started burning down the wire quite quickly. In short, the wire is heat resistant but not fire resistant.

Will I be electrocuted by using this wire in my laser?
ec6124a6.mp4 video by lazorlad - Photobucket
the wire insulates against everything a 6kV transformer can throw at it. so, if your laser runs on over that, you may want to do further tests. however, for what most people use here, the wire has plenty of insulation.

Pros:
very flexible
the most heat resistant wire I have ever seen
great electrical insulation

cons:
if you had dreams of a laser inside a barbeque, i am sorry to say that you may want a different kind of wire.

TheTeslaWarrior said:

Will I be electrocuted by using this wire in my laser?
(...)
the wire insulates against everything a 6kV transformer can throw at it. so, if your laser runs on over that, you may want to do further tests. however, for what most people use here, the wire has plenty of insulation.

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As someone who regularly licks my driver output leads to see if they're working, I sincerely hope that my builds never peak above 6kV

rhd said:

As someone who regularly licks my driver output leads to see if they're working, I sincerely hope that my builds never peak above 6kV

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Really? That's... dangerous, isn't it? Even at 4V, we are running things at 1A+. Isn't 60mA enough to stop your heart?

electricity like to follow the path of least resistance, theres no reason for it to go to your heart (if you need to go to phoenix, why would you stop by New York first?). also, with your internal body resistance, if the electricity were to get to your heart, it would only be about 40mA.

Hmm, I suppose that makes sense. I just use a DMM to test my leads though

probably smart to learn to do that, if you get into Hv lasers like bare tube HeNe and ssy-1s.:crackup:

Anyways, 4V is not enough voltage to push the current through your body. Nice review.

I wouldn't recommend this type of wire for kilovolt voltages though, i'm sure it was never intended for that use. The isolation strength could be several kilovolt in a practical test, but i seriously doubt this is rated even for mains voltages.

The heat testing seems great though! I havent received mine yet, but i'm sure it will come in very handy - i like to use this type of wire under circuitboards, because the isolation will not melt off if you touch it with the soldering iron when working on a nearby solder joint.

at the voltages i was testing, i had no problem with the insulation thickness. though, i agree and would never touch the wire at that high of voltage, the point was to demonstrate that the insulation would be thick enough for most laser enthusiast's needs.

as long as you don't solder with a blow torch, you should be fine :crackup:

When was the wire called into question?

My first build used wire from a cell phone charger. I have never had insulation melt or heard of wire of any reasonable guage causing problems.... Maybe ive just missed those threads.

Wolfman29 said:

Really? That's... dangerous, isn't it? Even at 4V, we are running things at 1A+. Isn't 60mA enough to stop your heart?

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Its always good to keep one hand behind your back while working with HV.

Nice arc for 6KV. I have a 12K Franceformer. It does a nice 4-6" arc.

Heheh, the one hand rule.
Thanks, its a Franceformer as well. The little guy has served me well, that's for sure.