What Size Stranded Wire is This?

I have a few hundred feet of five conductor stranded cable. I believe it was made by Belden but there is no markings along its length and I don't have the reel that it came on. It's nice flexible cable, so I decided to use some of it for hookup wire.

I stripped a short length and took a measurement of each of the seven strands with a calipers and they measured 9 thousands of an inch. I looked that up in the wire table in the reference manual, and it says it's a 31 AWG wire that's 79.2 circular mils. I multiplied this by 7 and got 554.4 circular mils total.

I looked this up in the wire table, but it's between 23 AWG, which is

511 circular mils, and 22 AWG which is 640 cm. I'm puzzled because I've done this procedure a number of times before and I've come fairly close to the exact AWG in every case. This is the first that I can remember where the value is that far off.

Usually when you check the specs for this kind of cable, it is either 24 AWG or 22 AWG, and never 23 AWG. But it's obvious that the calculated total is way too small to be a 22 AWG and way too large to be a 24 AWG.

Any ideas? I think I'll try Belden's website and see if I can find some cables that have five conductors and see what they say. Thanks.

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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th
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It is probably a European stranded cable with 0.25mm^2 area. Very common here.

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ciao Ban
Bordighera, Italy
Reply to
Ban

I read in alt.binaries.schematics.electronic that Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark Remover" wrote (in ) about 'What Size Stranded Wire is This?', on Fri,

13 Feb 2004:

It doesn't seem to be a metric cable, either, unless my arithmetic is off. 7/0.2 mm is a standard size. 7/0.25 has also been made, but that's bigger than 0.009 in per strand.

Some odd size cables are made for railway signalling.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
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Reply to
John Woodgate

I read in alt.binaries.schematics.electronic that Ban wrote (in ) about 'What Size Stranded Wire is This?', on Sat, 14 Feb 2004:

But it calculates to 0.287 mm^2. 7/0.2 mm is 7/0.0078 in, not 7/0.009 in.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
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Reply to
John Woodgate
22.5 awg

Reply to
Martin Riddle

Yeah, that's what I was beginning to think, too.

JW said it didn't seem like metric, either. I didn't think about trying that way.

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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

common

Thanks. I was wondering what it'd be in mm. I think I found it on Belden's website.. Go to this URL

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ull&P5=null&P6=null and type in 8445 in the search box and click Go.

It says that it's five conductors #22 AWG, which is 7 strands of 30 AWG. Could be that my calipers are measuring the wire too tightly or something. The 8445 number sounds familiar, but it's been more than a decade since I ordered any of it, and I'm not sure.

The reason I'm interested is that I'm using some of it for DC power, and I wanted to know what gauge the wire is, so I can figure out what kind of voltage drop I might get over several feet. I paralleled a couple conductors, so looking at the wire tables, it looks like that's equivalent to a single 19 AWG conductor.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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Knowing the resistivity of copper, the temperature, and the diameter of
the strands, you could work out the resistance (thence the voltage drop
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Reply to
John Fields

Draw an amp through a precision (1%) 1 ohm resistor, (1 watt or more) connected with 100 feet of the wire. Adjust the source for 1 volt across the resistor, then measure the drop in the wire. My guess is that would be as accurate as, (if not more accurate than) a wire table. Heck - you might not need a precision resistor. Even a 10% error should not matter if you use this as hook up wire for most applications.

Reply to
ehsjr

........

.009 is only ONE significant digit. Try measuring it better, is it .0090 or .0091 or even .0095? 9+-1 is a 10%error which translates to

20% error in area.
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Reply to
Nick Hull

Size

7/0.009

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Thanks for the idea. I've done this procedure with the measuring of the wire size a number of times before, and it's always proved a reliable way to come up with the right wire size. It's just not quite right this time, that's all. I think I clamped the calipers too tightly on the several strands I measured, and got one silly milliInch too little for the measurement. If I add that silly little milliInch, and use 10 thousandths for the wire size, it comes out as a 22 gauge stranded wire.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

seven

says

7

Yeah, I think you discovered my problem. I think I measured the strands too tightly, because I used 10 thou instead of 9 thousandths of an inch, and it comes out 22 AWG. Thanks.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

I read in alt.binaries.schematics.electronic that Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark Remover" wrote (in ) about 'What Size Stranded Wire is This?', on Sun,

15 Feb 2004:

There is a manufacturing tolerance on the strand size. The cable is OK irrespective of strand size if it meets the resistance or voltage-drop specification.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
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Reply to
John Woodgate

"Watt

snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com>) about 'What Size Stranded Wire is This?', on Sun,

for

wire.

Square wire? ;-) Or maybe oval? It might have been stretched when it was installed in the ceiling over a decade ago. That might be the reason for the smaller size.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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