CCA wire Promoted as Low Cost 1.excellent electrical conductivity 2. good tensile strength, excellent welding and corrosion CCA Used for HF Applications
One of the main traditional applications of CCA is in communication cables as the central conductor of coaxial cables. CCA is also sometimes used in enamelled magnet wire when low weight is critical (e.g. coils for headphones and aircraft instruments). Due to the skin effect, which means that high frequency signals are mainly transmitted in the surface layers of a conductor, CCA is usually used for carrying high frequency signals. For these applications (e.g. coaxial cable) the higher DC resistance of the aluminium core is not so important. Indeed, in really high capacity, very high frequency coaxial cables signal transmission within the central core of the conductor is so negligible that hollow copper tubes, not solid wires, may be used.
CCA Promoted as Low CostCCA suppliers promote the material as offering most of the advantages of aluminium, such as having lighter weight and lower cost than copper, but without the main perceived disadvantages of aluminium. With CCA they argue that there is no need, as there can be with aluminium wires used in LV energy cables, for specially designed accessories to give reliable electrical connections. Though CCA appears to have a significant cost advantage over copper because its main constituent is the cheaper metal aluminium, in practice some of this advantage is eroded by the higher fabrication costs of CCA, as cladding processes are more complex than conventional wire-drawing. Traditionally, in developed economies CCA has not been widely used as a low cost alternative to copper: for example, some lightweight aircraft cables using CCA actually cost more than their copper equivalents. This situation is, however, changing due to the sustained high level of copper prices and increased production volumes of CCA that are becoming available from China
Good Corrosion Resistance of CCA Wire
