SilCu™ Silver-Copper
Bi-Metal Bonding
- STL have developed a variation of our cold-cladding process that enables us to produce SilCu™ Silver-Copper bimetal strip as a throughlay side to side bonded for fuse applications.
- The innovative Silver-Copper bonding technique now has great potential for replacing solid Silver Fuse Elements within square bodied high speed Fuses, typically used in PV and other similar applications
- Silver & Copper have been bonded by STL since the 1950’s. Brass can also be used in many applications to save cost. Equally, Silver can be thinner, overlapping with electro-plated processes to eliminate waste.
SilCu™ Silver-Copper Bi-Metal Bonding
STL innovation has led to us creating an evolution to our cold-cladding process allowing throughlay SilCu Silver-Copper bimetal strip, specifically for Fuses.
Both Copper (Cu) and Silver (Ag) are ductile metal with very excellent electrical and thermal conductivity. These products can be rolled to 75 microns as if one material, thus making them the norm within the Fuse industry.
STL has a long history of pioneering this Fuse product in conjunction with a Danish customer back in the late 1990s and onwards. Today, STL is a world leader in this product because the cold bonding technique allows for an excellent joint between the two metals resulting in a very predictable blowing characteristic.
Additionally for the electro-mechanical switching market, Brass can be used at a reduced cost compared to Copper without difficulty.
- Entirely produced inhouse in Redditch with considerable know-how the STL product is seen in China, India, USA and Europe amongst others.
- The Fuse product can be rolled to 75 microns (app 0.003 inches) thickness and controlled with digital read out Vollmer micrometres allowing full traceability of each coil.
- Transport and scrap management costs can be further reduced by STL in-house stamping to suit your specific needs.
- Within the switching industry cost reductions continue with the development of Silver Brass inlays. Silver can be below 50 microns in thickness for pivot connections and using Brass instead of Copper reduces prices even further.
- Silver nickel is typically used to reduce arcing damage and individual coils or parts can have various alloys as required by the application. Further benefits from the old seamwelded routes are a lack of mercury being needed in the machinery and no need for special feeder rolls on the stamping presses, quicker set ups and greater flexibility along with the obvious cost benefits.