[ausev] Parts/Advice Needed

[Christopher Robison]

On Sun, 2007-10-28 at 18:56 -0700, TERRY KING wrote:
> My own choice of heavy guage cable after quite a bit of searching is
> available from Mcmaster Carr. They offer a brand called Vutron and yes
> it has orange insulation. The interesting thing about it is the number
> of individual strands; 1/0 cable contains over 2600 30ga. strands
> which has the same current carrying capacity as ordinary 2/0 welding
> cable. Their price the last time I checked was $2.92 per foot unless
> it has increased.

Our new company (Revolt Custom Electric Vehicles) carries orange-jacket
cable. which for the 1/0 size is 1045 30gauge strands. Our 2/0 wire is
1330 30-gauge strands. (I believe the Vu-tron strands are much finer
than 30 gauge.) What confuses me about what you're saying is that
stranded cable to my knowledge is never sold by diameter, it's sold by
total circular mils of cross-section. So, 1/0 gauge defines a total
thickness of copper, whether it's solid or stranded. Obviously, for the
same gauge the stranded wire will be substantially larger than the
solid, just looking at it. As far as I understand, there is no such
thing as a 1/0 cable having the capacity of a 2/0 cable, unless you're
talking about different metals or alloys.

Having said that, Vu-tron is widely regarded to be some of the best
welding cable available, expensive but known to be more flexible that
other types, and I understand the jacket is resilient to just about
everything.

Then again, jacket resilience should be of less importance in an EV as
fewer chemicals and fluids are involved, there's far less heat and all
of your long runs should be enclosed in Carflex or similar flexible
nonmetallic liquid-tight conduit. Flexibility is important as you may
not find many opportunities for long, completely straight runs of steel
conduit in a modern car.  :-)

Though it doesn't compare well to Vu-tron, the cable we sell is finer
stranded than other stuff we've used (eg. Waytek), also finer than
McMaster's standard cable, and has the benefit of an inner jacket with a
contrasting color, to make damage more visible. Per foot, our 1/0 is
$3.00 and our 2/0 is  $3.30. Our 6-gauge cable (for charging wires) is
$.80/foot. All of this cable is bright orange. We sell other sizes as
well, though we don't currently have any in stock. For high-current 12V
applications, we sell black and red, as well. We can also cut and put
terminals or lugs on, though you might want to do that yourself.

Full disclosure:  We buy this cable in quantity from Trystar. You'll
notice that their prices are lower than ours, but we price ours with
shipping included. We hope that the convenience of buying locally, and
in the precise quantities you need, will be an advantage for you in
choosing our cable. 

We'll also be reselling large-diameter flexible conduit and fittings
(larger than the stuff at Home Depot) for applications where you'd like
multiple conductors in a single conduit, though we haven't worked out
pricing yet.


-- 
Christopher Robison
chris at ohmbre.org
http://ohmbre.org          <-- 1999 Isuzu Hombre + Z2K + Warp13!