strand silver wire vs copper strand? Help

[macman4]

I have run out of wire that was sent with my DIY LED's. the wire they sent was a silver stranded wire. Can I use copper stranded wire of the same size. It would be running from control boards to my LED's on a heat sink.

 

 

Thanks, Bob

[Mojado]

Typically you don't want to make connections between aluminum and copper contacts/wire because aluminum will corrode.

[phineous]

It'll be fine. Google galvanic corrosion and see if it applies to your situation, and if you need to take steps to minimize it. Probably not.

[macman4]

Thanks, Majado. The aluminum and copper will not be touching. I soldered all my LED's with the aluminum wire,.all wire goinjg to and from the control board will be copper and the copper wire will be soldered on to the first LED + and the last LED -

[blasterman]

I assume we're talking about aluminum wire and not true 'silver', correct? Aluminum stranded is typically cheaper than copper, but given the small amount of wire here it sure seems petty not using copper in a LED kit.

 

I generally grab what's closer when building lights, and have noticed aluminum contacts tend to corrode a bit more with lights over salt tanks.

 

The biggest annoyance with aluminum stranded is it's a lot tougher to 'tin' and get solder to stick to it. Even with flux, it's annoying to work with. A spool of 18awg speaker wire from any big box store is cheap enough and you can build a lot of lights with it.

[evilc66]

Aluminum wire is quite uncommon, and it's very unlikely that anyone has used the stuff for an LED build. What you call "silver" wire is just tin plated copper. It's still copper. The tin plate is just there to reduce corrosion issues. Easiest way to tell if you have aluminum wire is that it breaks after being bent a few times, and is quite stiff and brittle.