Silver contact question

[AttyPops]

My personal experience is that silver can go a lot longer between cleanings while maintaining decent performance.

Heck, given this chart, you may as well gold plate it (unless that degrades too quickly with the arc). Way less tarnish with gold.

But cleaning regularly would be the best in all cases, right?

It is more than just the materials used but also how they are applied. And in the grand scheme of things, how much does it actually influence the vape. @Mooch performed some tests and discovered there is not much difference between the metals.

View attachment 791847

 

[Rossum]

Heck, given this chart, you may as well gold plate it (unless that degrades too quickly with the arc). Way less tarnish with gold.

Plating will eventually wear through from arcing. A solid silver contact can be re-polished good as new more-or-less indefinitely.

But cleaning regularly would be the best in all cases, right?

Absolutely. The question is: How often do you need to clean it to keep it running well?

 

[AttyPops]

Plating will eventually wear through from arcing. A solid silver contact can be re-polished good as new more-or-less indefinitely.


Absolutely. The question is: How often do you need to clean it to keep it running well?

Yeah, but they said it was probably silver plated. And a solid gold contact could be re-polished too (but would be much more expensive and thus impractical).

 

[Rossum]

Yeah, but they said it was probably silver plated. And a solid gold contact could be re-polished too (but would be much more expensive and thus impractical).

Yep. An ounce of silver costs ~$15.00 and makes a fair number of contacts. An ounce of gold costs ~$1300...

Gold is commonly used for plated contacts that don't move much and don't make/break current so there's no arcing. In that case, it can be plated very thinly, which makes it economical, and it does not oxidize at all.

 

[sonicbomb]

Noble metal - Wikipedia

 

[Bunnykiller]

yup... the difference between silver and copper is like being able to tell if someone put 1 more grain of rice on the spoonful you just swallowed...