What is the temperature of the melting point of insulation on mains
flex which is made of silicone?
Two stories from ages ago... (60s)
My father was OEM sales manager for Pass and Seymour. They used to make
things like big ceramic sockets for street lights. Some of his customers
wanted high temperature pig tail wires on those sockets. For silicon rubber,
the limit was not the insulation. The copper wire (fine strands) inside
corroded too fast at temperatures which were fine for the insulation.
I spent a summer/co-op at GE's Engineering Standards Lab. They
used to test parts coming in from vendors. Standard procedure was
to give a sample part and the spec to a technician. Technician would
read the specs and do all the the tests. My boss told me the story of
a spec that (essintially) called for silicon rubber on flexible
waveguide. Spec said roughly: bake at x C for 1 hour. No problems
sould be visble on the furface of the insulation. x was big.
The technician turned on the oven, cut a couple of lengths of heavy
wire off the spool, bent them into hooks and suspended the sample
(2 ft long?) from the screw holes in the end bells to the rack in
the oven. Then he set the timer for an hour and went to lunch.
A short time later there was smoke all over the place. The solder
holding the end bells on had melted. (I said x was big.)
The silicon rubber had fallen on to the way-hot floor.
Other than a bit of scorching where it had hit the floor, the
insulation was fine.
