I bought a small jar of a carbon based adhesive called Wire glue on
ebay last month. Thought it might be good for PC board projects where
you have to solder in really tight spots.

Today while putzing in my attic I came across a roll of about 200 ft
of 75 ohm CATV cable that I stashed there when I moved in back in
2002. Well, the reason I never used it for anything in the first place
was the hassle involved in attaching reducing adapter like a UG/176-U
to the aluminum foil shield. It hit me that this "wire glue" might be
a decent way of doing so.

Has anyone had any experience with this stuff? If you are not familiar
with the material all you have to do is search for "wire glue" on
ebay. I'm curious as to the opinions of many of our esteemed group
members.

Thanks,

Dave

On Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:56:43 -0700 (PDT), Dave Smirkenberg
wrote:

Today while putzing in my attic I came across a roll of about 200 ft
of 75 ohm CATV cable that I stashed there when I moved in back in
2002. Well, the reason I never used it for anything in the first place
was the hassle involved in attaching reducing adapter like a UG/176-U
to the aluminum foil shield. It hit me that this "wire glue" might be
a decent way of doing so.

If the cable is RG-59/u, consider leaving it in the attic until it
rots. If it's RG-6/u, it can be used for ham radio purposes. Instead
of the proposed UG-176/u to PL-259 adapter kludge, just install the
correct compression type F connector on the ends of the RG-6/u and use
adapters to go to PL-259 or whatever. You'll find that the 75 to 50
ohm mismatch loss is rather minimal.
http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wireless/75_ohm_hardline.html

As for the wire glue, due to the lack of a suitable manufacturer and
part number that can be researched, my guess(tm) is that it's much
like "metallic epoxy", which is nothing more than aluminum or graphite
powder mixed into the epoxy. The particles are quite far apart from
each other, resulting in extremely poor conductivity. Since RF likes
to flow on the surface of conductors, such glues are going to have a
fairly high surface resistance, and are therefore useless for RF.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Dave Smirkenberg wrote:
I bought a small jar of a carbon based adhesive called Wire glue on
ebay last month. Thought it might be good for PC board projects where
you have to solder in really tight spots.

Today while putzing in my attic I came across a roll of about 200 ft
of 75 ohm CATV cable that I stashed there when I moved in back in
2002. Well, the reason I never used it for anything in the first place
was the hassle involved in attaching reducing adapter like a UG/176-U
to the aluminum foil shield. It hit me that this "wire glue" might be
a decent way of doing so.

Has anyone had any experience with this stuff? If you are not familiar
with the material all you have to do is search for "wire glue" on
ebay. I'm curious as to the opinions of many of our esteemed group
members.

Thanks,

Dave

Having used, and had grief from, the best quality silver and gold
conductive epoxies, I'm highly skeptical of this stuff except in the
very least demanding of applications. It appears to provide no physical
strength to the joint, so any connection would have to be physically
strong to begin with -- in which case you've probably already got decent
electrical contact and just need to keep air and moisture out of the
joint. I'd be surprised if flexing, temperature changes, and any other
disturbances didn't cause the already marginal resistance to increase,
possibly dramatically. It looks to me like attaching a reducing adapter
is very likely to be much less of a hassle in the long run than fooling
with this stuff.

Have you considered putting an F or BNC connector on it, then using an
adapter as necessary?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL