Geoff,

Try    http://www.smallparts.com/   and search for "17-7 PH Spring Wire"

As sold, in "Condition C" it has a yield strength of over 190,000 psi 
and if you want to bake it for an hour at 900 F you can raise that to 
260,000, and it will possibly get even higher than that.  The 17-7 
material we use for leaf springs gets a yield strength close to 
300,000 psi after baking.

The material property you want to be looking at is yield 
strength.  As defined by AK Steel 
corp. 
http://www.aksteel.com/pdf/markets_products/stainless/precipitation/17-7_PH_Data_Sheet.pdf 
it is the stress level at which the material will permanently stretch 
by 0.2%.  You could stress a wire to half that value reasonably safely.
In some places yield stess is defined at 2% or even 5% permanent 
stretch, so you should be aware of which one is being used.  In any 
case, working at 40-50% of yield is likely to be OK.

Brett


At 02:30 AM 6/6/2010, you wrote:
>Does anyone understand wire strength ?
>
>I will look at this way.
>
>HY80 steel has the ability to stand up to
>80,000 lb/in^2 so you just translate
>say the area of a given steel wire
>what it would be if whatever weight
>was on that area as translated to
>the area of the wire guage then if it is
>like 1/2 the yield strength 40,000 lb/in^2 you should be ok ??
>
>5 lb on a 28GA wire might translate to
>Diameter => 2*SQR(weight/(PI * 40000))
>Where HY80 type steel is the wire steel ?
>Maybe 28 or less AWG steel wire. (you need an AWG table)
>
>If it were piano wire it might be HY160
>or something better than plain steel ?
>
>IS there such a thing as stainless steel wire
>or something that will not corrode/rust ?
>
>Does any of that sound right ?
>
>I think like a LAYMAN and not Lehman :-)
>
>Thanks ahead of time,
>geoff


__________________________________________________________

Public Seismic Network Mailing List (PSN-L)