You will surely have noticed that many of the cables we produce use tinned copper conductors, and I imagine that many of you are thinking: “Why use tinned copper wire as a conductor rather than the more commonly used conductors?”
In the early 1950s, especially in the United States, tinned copper wire was considered the best solution and was commonly used in industrial applications because galvanizing copper wires with tin prevented corrosion and improved strippability, making the wire more durable and reliable for industrial use.
In the 1950s, corrosion was a problem because the common insulators of the time released sulfur peroxide over time, which reacted with the copper conductors to form copper sulfide, resulting in degraded wire performance, and in some cables this still happens today.
However, if the copper wire was tinned, the sulfur peroxide released by the insulators could not degrade the copper by forming copper sulfide, thus protecting the performance of the cables.
Furthermore, in the shielded cables of the 1950s, the composition of the shielding made it difficult to remove the bare copper conductors, so tinned copper conductors were used, which were easier to strip in preparation for use.
The origin of tinned copper wire was therefore linked to purely practical reasons of corrosion prevention and ease of stripping, making the wire more durable, reliable, and easy to handle in industrial applications.
Over time, new wire insulators were developed that did not corrode bare copper conductors, and new shielding materials were developed that made stripping bare copper conductors a breeze.
These new insulation and shielding materials meant that tinned copper conductors, which were so expensive to produce, began to disappear from the scene, victims of market forces that favored less expensive materials, erasing them from people’s memory.
However, tinned copper conductors have characteristics that are distinctly different from other types of conductors and deserve careful consideration even today.
But you’ll find out in our next article:
