Power cord thickness

[Meghans Dad]

It think it is against the rules here to tease the alien abductees .

Maybe I could get the same effect if I wrap my amp in aluminum foil?

 

[RoadRanger]

As long as we are going off the rails here one of my singers has another carp band with a bass player who claims he was abducted by aliens .

 

[seamonkey]

*


Because of the way this Thread has gone.
*DO NOT EVER USE A WIRE COAT HANGER FOR ANYTHING THAT CONDUCTS ELECTRICITY.

Metal coat hangers and Neon Sign transformer make a great Jacob's ladder. I see them every Halloween.
Don't worry about it, the Transformers are UL listed

(Nobody do this - OK? )

 

[lokikallas]

I like 16 gauge power cords 6-10' long. 18g seems a little wimpy to me. 14 a little stiff and heavy. 16g is the goldilocks gauge for me.

 

[BadExample]

Basically UL has less strict limits on temperature than CSA. UL seems to only worry about cable failure, CSA seems to be concerned about whether it will burn you when you touch it.

Because we prefer our people get burnt once, learn from it and not grab at things not knowing what to expect

As a hobby machinist, I can tell you, cold metal looks almost the same as very hot metal. You only male that mistake 3 or 4 times!

*DO NOT EVER USE A WIRE COAT HANGER FOR ANYTHING THAT CONDUCTS ELECTRICITY.

Oh, c'mon bro. SBB, who hasn't used a metal clothes hanger and a couple of car batteries to weld their bicycle frame back when they were younguns? Hold up yer hand that has the most fingers if you haven't!

 

[S-Bigbottom]

Oh, c'mon bro. SBB, who hasn't used a metal clothes hanger and a couple of car batteries to weld their bicycle frame back when they were younguns? Hold up yer hand that has the most fingers if you haven't!

They are great for everything but hanging clothes. They also sound better when used as speaker wire than an expensive cable.*


* Hi.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

Basically UL has less strict limits on temperature than CSA. UL seems to only worry about cable failure, CSA seems to be concerned about whether it will burn you when you touch it.

The British electricians at the U.S. joint venture refinery where I worked used to complain that the U.S. wiring codes were meant to protect only the equipment, not the people using it.
but I have noticed some changes since then, the one I can remember is that now the ground lug of receptacles goes on top, so if you drop something onto a plug that is ajar, it won't conduct power

 

[agedhorse]

I became accustomed to power drops in Asia, or sag, where your 220v system gets down to only about 180 volts during prime time.
That would make my 20 amp (4,400 watt) hot water heater start to draw about 25 amps
so you can see why I'm cautious these days

My dad worked as an electrician most of his life & also preferred over-specing stuff, above the call of NEC.

No it won't. Your 20 amp water heater draw will decrease to 16.4 amps. This is the ONLY way a resistive load can work with a change in voltage, it follows Ohm's law precisely.

It's fine to over-spec above the minimums of the NEC, but IMO it's FAR more important to understand what the NEC actually means and why the code is written the way it is. Only then can you appreciate the cost-benefit trade-off associated with over-spec'ing. (for example, see the above water heater calculation)

 

[agedhorse]

Depends on allowable temperature rise, which depends on jacket type.

Not just the jacket insulation, but the conductor insulation too.

 

[agedhorse]

I bought solid wire for in-home re-wiring, thinking it would actually be easier to connect to the receptacles & stuff. I was wrong

Actually, solid or stranded can be used with equal results and equal ease if you have the experience making up box connections and know all the tricks. Stranded wire requires special receptacles designed specifically for stranded conductors, or requires pig-tailing to solid wire to make the lug connection (which is inconvenient at best).

 

[agedhorse]

Never thought I should ask, but maybe this thread is the place :
I have 2 different power cables, 18 AWG,
but there is different temperature indicated.

One is 105'C

and on the other there is 2 temperature :
(UL) SVT 3/C 18 AWG VW-1 75'C 300V ...
CSA SVT 3/C 18AWG FT2 60'C 300V.....

What does this means ?

It's the details of the specific standards that the product was approved to. For all intensive purposes it's no big deal because it's the SAME cable and connector and if it meets the 75 deg. spec than it also meets the 60 deg spec.

But code for building wiring, right? The solid wire?

Code does not specify solid or stranded (in the gauges we are discussing) except for very specific cases. In general it can be either, but the terminals must be listed to the wire type being used.

I'm not an engineer, but based on everything I know, their pitch of using multiple small gauge wires instead of 3 conductors makes some sense because they have lower resistance.

How is this the case? The three conductors being discussed in a standard power cable are ALWAYS stranded, made up of many smaller wires. You say you are not an engineer but their pitch makes some sense... if you WERE an engineer you would immediately recognize that we are in an ice selling exercise to Eskimos. THIS is why we (engineers) go through 4-6 years of university education, to understand the science behind the products we design or analyze, and to recognize when the marketing department has abducted the engineers and are holding them in the basement until the Zombie Apocalypse.

 

[Bugeyed Earl]

*


Because of the way this Thread has gone.
*DO NOT EVER USE A WIRE COAT HANGER FOR ANYTHING THAT CONDUCTS ELECTRICITY.

Better still, do not use a metal coat hanger ever! Invalid Link Removed if you care about your garments, and you need a MINIMUM of cedar, but walnut is obviously better. I can see the difference it makes, and the guy who sells them says so.

 

[Mark Reccord]

This isn't my claim - it's Essential Sound's. Power Cords Make A Difference Sound Quality Reduce Noise Power Cable Tests | Essential Sound Products

I wouldn't use these if I couldn't hear the difference. I can also plug one into my Pioneer Kuro plasma monitor and see the difference in blacks and colors.

I'm not an engineer, but based on everything I know, their pitch of using multiple small gauge wires instead of 3 conductors makes some sense because they have lower resistance. All I can say is that I can hear the improvement in sound that's attributable to nothing else besides the power cord.

Victor Wooten and Michael Rhodes are two well-known Nashville bassists that use and believe in these too.

They also claim that high voltage transmission lines use coaxial cable, which certainly gives me a sense of how much they actually know about electricity. I (and other EEs) have debunked their other claims before so I'm not going to get into it at length again. Suffice it to say that power amplifiers don't pull current directly from the mains, they pull it from their power supply which (assuming good design) is well buffered from the mains supply by the filter caps and is a low impedance source of current from the power amplifier circuit's point of view. Current is supplied per demand and is effectively instantaneous. On the mains end of the power supply, current does only flow for part of the AC cycle as they state, but it's not really related to the audio signal other than by total demand. Current flows from the mains only when the voltage at the filter caps begins to drop from demand. The frequency of the mains current is fixed at the line frequency. I design and build equipment that operates at way higher frequencies and with way more current demands than audio gear and none of it requires any kind of special power cable and if performance was being limited by the power cable we'd see it on our test gear which can perceive frequencies and phase differences orders of magnitude higher than our senses can detect. Some of the higher frequency stuff does require special signal cabling to reduce losses from skin effect but it all uses bog standard power cable.

I don't care who endorses this, it's still a bunch of horsepucky.

They're the same for a given wire gauge. In fact - a stranded 18AWG wire has to have a larger diameter than a solid 18AWG wire to make up for the air gaps (lower fill factor).

What they are doing is using 4x20AWG wires in parallel for each conductor for a combined AWG of 14. So the ESP cable as a whole has less resistance than a typical 18AWG one because it's really a 14AWG cable.

The idea behind this (according to ESP and other "high end" power cable manufacturers) is that the multiple small conductors will give the current carrying capability of the equivalent larger one but they will exhibit less skin effect delay at high frequencies due to their smaller diameter. Other manufacturers use Litz wire in their cables for the same reason. You and I know that even though these are real things, they are utterly irrelevant at audio frequencies and even less relevant at line frequency.

 

[aborgman]

Not just the jacket insulation, but the conductor insulation too.

Yep... I'm just used to doing all my wiring with stuff with 200C insulation.

 

[Joe Ty]

Better still, do not use a metal coat hanger ever! Invalid Link Removed if you care about your garments, and you need a MINIMUM of cedar, but walnut is obviously better. I can see the difference it makes, and the guy who sells them says so.

It's a tradeoff. I agree that metal is never good unless you like the look of creases in your shoulders and sleeves. However, for most of my clothes, plastic over wood due to space concerns. I do use wood for suits/sport coats and some pants.

 

[RoadRanger]

They also claim that high voltage transmission lines use coaxial cable, which certainly gives me a sense of how much they actually know about electricity.

You might want to rethink that LOL:
Invalid Link Removed

 

[Mark Reccord]

You might want to rethink that LOL:
Invalid Link Removed

Meh. They were referring to transmission lines in general not special cases like this.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

No it won't. Your 20 amp water heater draw will decrease to 16.4 amps. This is the ONLY way a resistive load can work with a change in voltage, it follows Ohm's law precisely.

Well , that's how it worked at my house.
I had a 20 amp breaker for a single device, the water heater.
When the power sagged down to 180v at night & we used the water heater, the breaker would pop.
It was fine when the voltage was where it belonged, 220v.
(talking about a tankless "point of use" water heater)

Stranded wire requires special receptacles designed specifically for stranded conductors,

That explains it, because that receptacle in the photo I previously posted is normally wired with stranded wire.

The ones I had were similar to this, but cream colored plastic.
This looks like black rubber

it's FAR more important to understand what the NEC actually means and why the code is written the way it is.

So stuff doesn't catch on fire

 

[S-Bigbottom]

 

[Killed_by_Death]

I guess, if you think that sharing personal experience that shaped my reasons for using a larger diameter wire when it's available is a pissing contest, then sure