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In Reply to: RE: Some ideas posted by RioTubes on June 04, 2007 at 08:26:32
The outlets should be as good as your and John's budgets allow. The best in my experience are the Oyaide. However, if another type, they should not have steel parts or nickel plating. A good budget outlet with these properties is the Pass & Seymour MRI hospital grade.
If mounted to a conducting plate, the outlets should be mounted with a conducting (nonmagnetic) screw at one end only. The other end should have a Nylon washer and screw to avoid making a conducting loop out of the outlet's back strap and the mounting plate. Current passes through the hot and neutral wires on either side of the outlet's back strap, so a conducting loop will act as a one-turn transformer. Even if the back strap is not magnetic, this parasitic transformer will cause distortion in the AC.
IME, it is difficult to damp the acoustic ringing of thick aluminum plate. Such materials as Dynamat X-treme are optimized for the thin sheet metal of auto bodies, and are ineffective on thicker materials. A sandwich of thinner plates and a sheet of Deflex rubber would be quiet and sturdy.
Finally, I've found from a recommendation and through experience that the best audio conductor size is 14-gauge. The famous Volex 17604 IEC cord is no longer made in Mexico, and I've not seen any reports on the audio performance of the Chinese replacement (but the report of nickel-plated plug blades is disturbing). Ace Hardware sells a short 14-gauge extension cord with an unplated, molded, right-angle plug. Cutting the outlet off this would make a cheap but effective line cord for the type of DIY outlet box we are discussing. I don't have experience with the Oyaide plugs, but I worry that any screw-clamp connection would be inferior to the welded connections used with molded plugs.
Follow Ups:
Thanks for the response Al. On the carbon fiber are you refering to carbon fiber mat or a carbon fiber plate that is already impregnated? I have a local supplier with every imaginable type of carbon fiber available, would a thin plate be good for this?
It sound like the carbon fiber goes on the outside of the box, correct? Does it matter if there is an electrical connection to the box?
On the start wiring, what is the best way to do this? If I take the wire coming in and it needs to go to 8 outlets, regular wire nuts are not going to cut it. Should I get a distribution bar with set screws or some other means of "fanning out" the wires?
Thanks again,
John S.
I would get a big soldering iron (80 watts is good) and some big wire nuts. Strip and clean the individual wires and twist together with the wire nut. Tape the bundle next to the wire nut. Remove the wire nut and solder the wires. I recommend a good solder, perhaps one containing silver and no lead. You should have some liquid solder flux to help with such material. Insulate with appropriate materials. Use the wire nuts if they do not contain steel springs (most of them do).
The carbon fiber goes on the outside of a metal box to damp RF standing waves on the power cords. If the box is wood, then the carbon could be applied to the inside and it will do the same thing. It might help with a metal box to apply carbon on the inside as well as the outside. I'm not sure how you would make a solid electrical connection to the carbon fiber: perhaps a brass screw once the epoxy is cured. I don't have experience with "grounding" the carbon fiber; this might or might not help.
Al and I have both used CF as a plate added to the outlet box as a cover or even over an outlet box cover. The stuff we're using is thick aircraft grade blanks, 3/8" thick, and hard to work plus hard to find. In that case it does require an extra large hole to pass the plug barrels through deep enough to seat in the outlets.
I also use in one application a double layer of epoxied CF cloth insde a nylon plate. That works too, but if done with a metal plate, you MUST put it on the exterior. This is easier material to find and work and poses no extra problems with seating a normal or audiophile plug as it isn't very thick at all.
One last way both of us use CF is as a cover/sleeve on the plug barrel exteriors themselves. There are several ways to do this, but easiest is to buy the 1.25" or larger sleeving from Soler as Al suggests and wrap or shrink wrap it into the exterior of the barrel. You can, in fact, sleeve an entire PC if you want, and Al told me it would probably work, but maybe not better than simply placing at the barrels and at the middle and nodes.
I use one last CF trick, but you have to be awfully careful with this one! I machined some of the circular cutouts from the thick plates to fit inside the barrels of the plugs and around the wires. This has to be carefully done so that it does not short or abrade the wires inside the plug. It also works.
Al can supply you (as he's written here several times) with the reasons different CF placements work. I won't repeat those.
In any case, you want to make sure the CF cannot make contact with the circuitry in any way directly, as I understand that CF is somewhat conductive.
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