green threads in Home Depot speaker wire? (1 Viewer)

[Fred G]

Going off the numerous recommendations I went to home depot to pick up some speaker wire. However I found something odd while stripping the wire. There appears to be two green threads on the positive wire. I have never seen this before and my initial thought is that something like this will induce heat and burn.

Any idea why this is in there?

 

[Ernest Yee]

Are you sure that's not just wire that's starting to blacken due to oxygen exposure?

 

[Fred G]

No I'm talking about the two green strips extending from the copper wire.

 

[Rick Lyon]

It's normal, and it's in a lot more brands then just the Home Depot stuff. I'm not educated enough to explain why, just observant enough to know it's common, at least in lesser quality wire.

 

[ChrisLazarko]

I see that in monster cable as well that I own... I have no idea what it is, or what the point of it is.

 

[John Garcia]

In this case, it is probably just to identify one of the wires, since it is only in one. 1) The speaker wires do not carry high voltage, so they should never heat up. 2) If they did, they wouldn't put something that would burn in there.

The plastic inside monster cable is a dielectric, which, it is my understanding, is used to keep the wire on the outside, since the majority of signal flows on the outer surface of the wire. Even in stranded wire, the signal will migrate to the outer surfaces of the stranding. The dielectric (nonconductive) simply takes up space in the center, where little or no signal is flowing anyway.

 

[Jim Williams]

I have seen this too in CAT5 cable. In my case it has been white and it gets in my way when I am making patch cables. I always have to clip it off before I start matching up pairs. I wish I knew what it was for also.

 

[nickpgoodman]

For Cat5 this is usually like a pull string so you can strip off a large part of the insulation at once. I would take a guess and say that maybe it serves the same function? Making it easier to remove some of the insulation?

 

[Ian-Fl]

The thread inside the casing of the cat5 wire is so you can strip back the wire without cutting the twisted wire inside that can happen when you use side cutters.
There's lots of double sheathed low voltage wire around with that thread inside for that purpose.
I think the thread inside the speaker wire is the result of the manufacturing process.

 

[John Garcia]

I think the thread inside the speaker wire is the result of the manufacturing process.

It's only in one of the two wires though. If it were manufacturing, it would be in both.