How to make conductive thread

Step 4 Harvesting the magnet wire

I could not find any suitable very fine magnet wire locally so I came up with an alternate source.

I had several small relays that I recovered from damaged circuit boards, I opened one to find that the coil has exactly what I was looking for.

These Omron G5LE series(can be found at Digikey for about $2 each, should you need to buy them) relays have a cap that is easily removed by lightly prying with a screwdriver. I used one of these caps for the wire guide support on the machine in the previous step. ( it was drilled with a small hole end to end for this purpose).


On the top of the relay there is metal flap and formed spring this cap was pried up using my fingers to reveal the center core of the coil.

This center core needs to be removed, A drill press will work but a much faster and reliable route is to grind the end off using a Dremel tool with a cutting disk. Just take the head off and the shaft can be driven out with a small screwdriver and a light tap.

Remove all of the metal tabs by pulling them straight out of the plastic base.

You will now be left with a roll of very fine wire on a small spool.

This is repeated 7 more times.

Comments

[Sevator]

Wire of the coils of the relay has electrical insulation of the paint, so it must be cleaned of insulation in place of solder. Better find somewhere wire with a polyurethane coating that requires no additional tinkering. Otherwise, work with conductive thread will be very difficult.