I honestly can’t tell if you’re doing a bit or are actually serious.
Comment on 2x2 lumber at Home Depot is now 1.28x1.28. Nominal size is supposed to be 1.5
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 6 months agoThe European wire gauge system makes no sense. There I said it. I don’t need to know the O.D. of the wire, I need to know the amp rating. The O.D. only becomes an issue for bending radius and there is a chart for that as well. Nothing is stopping some a**hole from making a wire almost completely out of plastic that has the O.D. of a typical 14AWG but can’t carry any serious amount of current under the European system. Under the AWG you always know what the current capacity is.
And while we are at it, you might as well standardize your wire sizes based on copper. You are never going to use anything except copper. So your units should reflect the material. I am building a chemical skid, that has nothing to do with the distance between the equator to the north pole.
Also when is the last time you were running wires that you needed a mm of precision? Meanwhile a fraction of an amp really does matter. So should not the thing that does matter be reflected in the product?
Magnetar@feddit.de 6 months ago
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sounds like a you problem.
oyo@lemm.ee 6 months ago
How does 16, 14, or 12 AWG tell you anything about ampacity?
afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You use the chart. How does mm of a wire, including insulation, tell you ampacity? As I said it is easy to imagine a thick wire that can carry almost no current. You can’t pull that crap with AWG system. It tells you the single most important fact, how much current a wire can carry. There is no incentive for wire manufacturers to cheat the system since a thicker insulation wire just means more cost for them.
Which ties in nicely with the other charts. Tell me how much power you need a motor to deliver and what I have to deal with and I can tell you exactly what wires to use, it’s bending radius how thick it is etc. None of which I can do in the CE system.
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Ironically outer insulation does impact conductor ampacity, because the rated continuous vs peak loads depend on the heat resistance rating of the insulation.
t0bd1@lemmy.world 6 months ago
European wire gauge is not the O.D. It is the cross section of the conductor inside the wire in mm^2. It is the same system AWG uses (they are directly correlated) with the added benefit that the numbers make sense (10mm^2/AWG8 wire has 4x the cross section of 2.5mm^2/AWG14 wire, so a quarter of the resistance of the thicker wire and thus roughly double the current capacity).