51 replies to this topic

[MSwiss]

I have a body to mount for a customer, but once done, I'll get up more pics.
 

 
In the above pic, all the bends in the .062" wire, were made, while the 2 pcs. were soldered together.
That solder joint was never held by anything other than my fingers.

[Samiam]

Mike,

 

Are you touting the strength of the solder joint or the strength of your fingers?   

[MSwiss]

The strength of the plating and the solder joint on the plating.
 
If the plating wasn't good, it would peel/break off of the wire.
 
If the solder didn't stick well to the plating, the 2 pieces would easily break apart.

[MSwiss]

More pics.
 

As I mentioned before, all the bends were made with the items soldered together. I soldered on to one of my (now) plated tongues, the .047" wire in the front. I was able to make that sharp bend, just with just with my hands, without breaking the joint.
The other one is with plated .055" wire. I wasn't able to get nearly as much leverage, but I was able to bend it, not just as sharp, and again, without breaking the joint.


In this picture, I soldered on .062" wire. With the thicker wire, I'm not able to get much bending leverage, with just holding the piece, whether I use my fingers or pliers, to try to bend the wire. While not a huge angle, it did still bend, and without breaking the solder joint or plating.


Here is a pc. of .047" and .055", soldered together, with extreme bends, without breaking the solder joint, or peeling the plating.

Also shown is the plated tongue, with the wire removed, and the solder somewhat smoothed.
 

This shows the .062" wire, I twisted off of the tongue, with pliers. The solder was reheated, and wiped off, to show the plating intact.


Here is the tongue, from 2 pictures up, after the solder was removed with a rotary wire brush, in my trim router. Again, the plating is intact.
 

These are 2 pcs. of .062" wire, soldered together, and bent with pliers, while holding the solder joint with just my fingers.The wire was bent further, with my fingers, with the pic in the first post.


Here is that piece, with even more bends, and in multiple directions.

All these pictures are to demonstrate, how well the plating solders, with zero prep, and that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't fracture it (the plating).

[Bill from NH]

Is this something new? K&S once plated all their piano wire back in the 70's & 80's when all sizes sold for a nickel per foot. I have some 3' lengths of 1/16" sold by Sullivan that are plated too.

[MSwiss]

Plated wire from K & S hasn't been available for years.(at least 25, and probably more like 35)

My long time contact at K & S doesn't even remember it.

Regardless, I don't remember it soldering very well.

Mine solders great.

I'm having the wire plated by the top plater for slot car chassis.

I was GM at Koford for 19 years, and believe me, there is some bad platers out there.

I went with the best guy.

[MSwiss]

There will be 8 sizes.

Prices are still being firmed up, but I hope to have that all figured out sometime this week.

It will be made available to distributors, for sale to raceways.

[JimF]

Whom will you source the wire from? I ask this question b/c I have had some pretty bad experiences lately with wire that was nowhere near straight enough to use. This has especially been the case with some recent purchases of .039 and .047.

[Bill from NH]

Pablo has had complaints with K&S .055 not being usable too. 

[Eddie Fleming]

Mike with the plating will the wire be standard sizes or a little over?

[Don Weaver]

Is this something new? K&S once plated all their piano wire back in the 70's & 80's when all sizes sold for a nickel per foot. I have some 3' lengths of 1/16" sold by Sullivan that are plated too.

I remember nickel plated brass tube too.  Always liked the look of it.....

[MSwiss]

Mike with the plating will the wire be standard sizes or a little over?

 
It will be a little over.

Whom will you source the wire from? I ask this question b/c I have had some pretty bad experiences lately with wire that was nowhere near straight enough to use. This has especially been the case with some recent purchases of .039 and .047.

I think the wire sources all get it from the same place.

That said, a "medium" amount of the wire I'm having plated, was purchased from Sano Dave's mom, and is from years ago.

But that won't last very long, so ultimately, I or the customer, will have to figure out how to straighten what's currently available, or just use it in shorter sections, where the ultimate flatness/straightness, isn't that important.

[JimF]

Pablo has had complaints with K&S .055 not being usable too. 

 

I remember that he posted something about that. The most recent problems I've had has been with smaller wire from a brand that is supposedly superior to K&S but is actually worse. (At least the tubes that I got)

[Dominator]

Jim, I got a tube of .055 from McMaster and that has been pretty good. I usually trim about 1/4" off each end and it's way better than K&S.

Thanks for sharing your new product with us Mike.

[Phil Smith]

I personally don't think the straightness of the wire has any real world effect on chassis performance unless it's really bad. Even really bad might not matter.

 

PS: I just noticed this thread is in the parts counter forum. Please feel free to delete this post.

[MSwiss]

I've been busy with parties and making weighted guides, so I haven't been promoting this real hard.

 

But I have been getting it out to top chassis builders, and everyone, so far, loves it.

 

The only negative thing is still the issue with the .047" and .055" wire that is available, and it's "wavyness".

 

Here's the feedback I just got from Greg Van Peenen;

 

Two thumbs up on the plated wire have used it on 2 chassis solder joints look really good. I even did the deal of soldering two scrap pieces together and pulling them apart solder joint was nice and strong and plating didn't move or pull off. Another good product for chassis builders and saves time not having ti tin all that wire.

 

So I'm going to officially put it up for sale.

 

If I move most of what I have, I will look into buying a large quantity of wire,(only if it's straight) and possibly lower the price and/or make it available to raceways at a discount.

 

In the meantime, here's the current prices;

.032", .039", .062", .078", 093", .125"  60 cents per 1 foot piece

 

.047", .055"  30 cents per 1 foot piece.(will be 60 cents when and if I get less wavy stuff in)

 

Because of the length, I will only ship it Priority Mail, so it makes most sense to order it when purchasing other items

[MSwiss]

When sending out some pinned guides to BP racer, and prolific hardbody chassis builder, Jae Henri, I included some samples of my plated wire.

It couldn't of worked out better.

Not only did he use it, but he did in a build that used regular wire.

It clearly shows it's superiority to tarnishing, compared to well cleaned , but non-plated wire.

Here's Jae's FB text;

The outer rails of this chassis are made of the new plated wire from Mike Swiss at Chicagoland. The inner rail is regular piano wire. Even with a thorough dose of WD40 after the tumbler, after 3 weeks, the inner rail has a small spot of corrosion near the nose piece, visible in the top photo. The plated outer rails are still clean and shiny. You can see discoloration starting to set in around the motor box, but the adjacent plated rails are clean. Works for me!

[Upfront slot cars]

I used this wire yesterday on a stock car build I am starting. This is def a plus for the serious racers and builders. Solder flows really nice down the rails creating a killer solder joint ! Clean up is easy ! This wire does not fatigue at all while soldering down the full length of the rails ! Two thumbs up from me . I will be using this wire exclusively from now on. I really appreciate Mikes efforts to bring us top quality parts at a price that doesn't break the bank !

[MSwiss]

Craig Correia used the plated wire, for the main rails, on this Dominator F1 chassis;

 

 

[MSwiss]

A big load of plated wire, going out to one of Retro Racing's prolific builders.

[MSwiss]

Plated 3/32" wire, going out to another famous Retro chassis builder, for front axles.
 
The plating is so thin, I knew it would at least work with JK fronts, especially since those sometimes require reaming, anyway.
 
But after chamfering the ends, I was pleased to find out that at least in the case of these two pieces of wire, and the two BB's shown, it will also work with ball bearings.
 

 

 

 

[MSwiss]

Dom Luongo / Dominator built chassis.

A Jackal with plated .055" and .062" wire for the mainrails.

A lightweight Retro Pro, using plated wire.

[JimF]

I really love the idea of this plated wire and when I do my next "stock up" I'll order up. On the wavyness issue, I agree that .047 has been bad lately and the .039 that I have isn't exactly great. Even the Malin brand which is supposedly better than K&S, is pretty poor.

 

FWIW....there was a company called Small Parts Inc. that sold excellent wire and also carried many non standard sizes (like .050 and .072). They also sold brass strip that was flat and square without the "bowing" that is evident on much of the K&S brass stock. They were absorbed by Amazon who killed off many of the good products. Still, SPI had to get that wire somewhere so good stuff has to be available, just a question of finding it.

[MSwiss]

I place an order a few days ago, and took a trip to K & S today, to pick it up, and discussed the issue of the wavy wire.

My contact said they were not aware of any problems, but are very concerned and are already looking into modifying the machine that staightens the smaller diameters.

A few pics of from their offices can be found in the below link.

http://slotblog.net/...ering/?p=725900

Who knew they use to sell go karts?

[MSwiss]

More plated wire going out, this to one of Retro racing's premier chassis builders.