Good Source of Quality Connectors?

[JasoninDLH]

I’ve been trying to find good sources of pure copper connectors, but just now realized maybe there are pure silver connectors out there and low and behold there seems to be.

Does anyone use silver connectors?

Why use them when the wire is copper?

Anyone have a good source for either pure copper connectors or silver connectors?

What material do you prefer for connectors and why?

Even though I’ve been interested and doing home and mobile audio projects off and on since the 90’s, I still have tons of questions!

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[hispls 5,000+ posts]

jim's machineworx and toolmaker are two popular shops that make buss bars and connectors.

The big issues with using silver is that it's 30$ an ounce to get your hands on physical, nobody sells it in nice regular shaped bar stock to be machined, and that while it's the best electrical conductor it does tarnish rather easily and quickly which will likely defeat all your conductivity gains. Even copper is getting a bit expensive and also prone to oxidizing which is why most of these things are built out of aluminum, it's cheaper, lighter, doesn't readily oxidize, and is conductive-enough for our purposes.

Unless you just want to werewolf proof your install there is zero reason to try to build things out of silver. This isn't building a space station or something where squeezing a couple percent less resistance (in an already low resistance circuit) is crucial to operating. Batteries are cheap and compared to trying to wire up a car with silver, so is multiple alternators hung on custom brackets.

Anyway, I like copper lugs and cable which can be had reasonable from weldingsupply.com and have had good luck with the toolmaker distro blocks and Jim's terminal reducers (aluminum). I did use copper bar to do up some bus bars for some battery banks I made here, but there's no reason aluminum wouldn't have done the same job provided I matched ampacity needs with larger bar stock. Ampacity charts for current carrying capacity on various materials are a google search away.

 

[JasoninDLH]

Well said and thanks for the info! I’ll check out those suppliers you suggested.