We have been in the power industry for 50 years. Sure, you can crush some old plumbers pipe in a vise, drill some holes, and use that for your bus bar. Correctly designed bars, are longer lasting, safer, and easier to machine, manage, and implement. Flexible, corrosion resistant, Electrically rated, durable good. Faulty, poorly designed, emergency bus bars have cost power generation plants millions of dollars in the past (example, : Titus Generation Station,) when the lights went out during emergency ( more than once).
Sure, I get what you're saying. However this is DIY stuff, so I expect people to hopefully be aware that this "may not" be as good as a commercially available solution. DIY is about learning, saving money, and being self sufficient.
This is not conductive grade copper. Pipe copper is only 80% Cu if I remember right. Whether hard drawn or soft, fine stranded, commercial strand or solid they are all 99.99% copper. I bet you know that but just a heads up, a lot of people don't.
Haha, actually the heating element was out so the clothes were taking hours to dry. I just splice the break in the element this morning while I wait for the new part to come in :)
Yes, but the point of the nickel plating is to protect the copper from corrosion. The really thin layer of nickel won't impact the performance of the copper bar
