On September 9, 2019 at 09:37, highfigh said...
A loose strand might not be a possibility with solid wire, but if that wire is bent too often, it can/will break. With solid wire, you get one chance.
If you are using the right gauge of the wire for the type of connection you've got, there will be no breaking of a solid wire with quite a bit of bendage. It is only the case that you get one chance when you're using the wrong wire.
The classic case that most of us have run into is using CAT cable where 22 or 20 gauge is called for, such as doorbell wiring or any other wiring where we have to bend the wire properly for it to be captivated under a screw. And in the case of CAT cable, the problem is likely NOT that you've flexed it too many times, it's that you've nicked the wire, so it is more likely to break when flexed a reasonable number of times.
CAT5 is meant to be punched down or crimped. In those cases, nobody bends the wire where the connection is made (and if you nick a wire when you remove the jacket, suddenly the wire is subject to breakage as though it had been flexed).
By the way, you say "too often" but I'll bet you mean "too many times." While I believe it's true that bending a wire back and forth really fast makes it break after fewer cycles of bending than wire bent back and forth more slowly, whenever we've broken a wire by bending it, we haven't been simultaneously trying to set any speed records!
