Description

We have worked with many wearable projects, and the weakest point always seems to be the wiring. Regular PVC-coated multistrand wire is ok for electronics, but it’s simply not designed for the bending abuse seen on a wearable piece. Here’s one part of the solution – Superflex wire!

Superflex wire is constructed of 8 strands of tinned enamel-insulated 36AWG (0.127mm / 0.005″ diameter) wire, wrapped around a nylon thread core. This makes it very flexible, somewhat like embroidery thread, but puffier.

Features:

• Super flexible
• 26AWG equivalent
• Prespooled on bobbin
• 6M (20′) on sewing machine bobbin (not recommended for machine sewing)

Specifications:

• 8 strands of 36AWG (0.127mm / 0.005″ diameter) enamelled tinned wire wrapped on nylon core
• 26AWG equivalent means ~ 2A DC current carrying capacity
• 0.24ohms per meter (0.073 ohms per foot)

We first used Superflex wire on our Superflex LEDs strings with great success, incorporating them into many wearable projects, and immediately saw the need for just raw wire with other wearables. Using it is a bit different than regular wire because of it’s unique construction. When we were using it to wire up individual addressable LED strings pixels, we came up with the following method, which works very well when you need an even number (2/4/6) of wires:

1. Run a “U” shape length of wire from the source to destination
2. At the bottom of the “U” (which is at one of the ends of your run), apply your soldering iron and a bit of fresh solder. This will:
   1. Melt the nylon core of the Superflex strand
   2. Melt through the enamel coating of the wire strands
   3. Tin the strands together
3. Then snip this ~1cm (3/8″) soldered joint in half, you’ll have two ready-to-use ends of Superflex!

We are presently doing experiments with sewing machines, and Superflex does not seem to like the extreme bends necessary in our Bernina to be in the bottom spool. We will post results with other machines as we get them.

Although super flexible, pretty, and robust, SuperFlex wire doesn’t behave much like regular wire when soldering. Here’s how to prepare the wire before soldering it into your project: