High-Pulse Wirewound Resistors

Riedon™ products by Bourns wirewound resistors, with their high-power and high-temperature ratings, are also easy to customize. Like every component, the fabrication technology used in resistor manufacturing has changed over time, and resistive films have significantly contributed to the cost-effective mass production of increasingly miniaturized devices. Yet the traditional wirewound resistor, despite a substantial decline in the number of manufacturers of this component in recent decades, remains an excellent solution for many specialized applications.

One reason for the survival of wirewound resistors is that all alternative fabrication techniques have drawbacks. For example, using conductive inks to produce carbon or thick film resistors can produce very low-cost components. Still, the resulting devices have limited pulse handling, no better than 0.1% initial tolerance, and poor long-term stability, typically 500 ppm/year to 1,000 ppm/year. The resistance is temperature dependent, with a temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) of around 50 ppm/°C to 100 ppm/°C, with relatively high-current noise of -18 dB to -10 dB, typical, where dB = 20 x log [noise voltage (in μV)/DC voltage (in V)].