A
Anno
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
Recently I had occasion to do a number of calculations based on
wire size (as in AWG or wire diameter).
How many amps can I send through one strand of a given flat band
cable and what is the voltage loss per meter? Given a coil
geometry, what size wire do I need so that the DC resistance of
the coil is 12 Ohm?
This is quite possible to do using web recources like AWG tables
and specialized calculators (not to forget your own pocket
calculator), but it gets tedious. So I have written a stand-alone
command line tool (a perl script) that answers similar questions.
The tool, called "wire" works with a number of wire parameters
(currently AWG, diameter, cross section, "ampacity" rating, and
resistivity (Ohms/km)). You can specify the value of any of these
as an entry parameter and it prints the values of the others, or a
selection of the others.
Given a coil geometry (inner, outer diameter and length), additional
coil parameters (number of turns, wire length, copper resistance,
inductivity) are available. These can also be entry parameters.
It is possible to specify multiple entry values in a single call,
using a from,to,step scheme, which results in a table of the requested
output parameters. A number of examples are appended below.
Now, my question is, would it be worth while to make this tool publicly
available? Is it superfluous? Not trustworthy enough? Command-line
tools are out of fashion anyhow?
Or is it too limited in scope? Should features be added? Non-metric
units, for instance? Materials beside copper?
If anyone cares, I have packed up a runnable version of its current
incarnation at
http://homepage.mac.com/anno5/FileSharing3.html
It's a tar archive that unpacks to a directory "wirepack" which
contains the script named "wire" and auxiliary material. The
script should be run from the directory "wirepack". It assumes
you have perl as "/usr/local/bin/perl". Calling "./wire -h"
produces a (lenghty) help message. "perldoc wire" shows a kind
of man page, currently mostly examples. The first few are
reproduced below.
Anno
----------------------------------------------------------------
In the simplest case, you call "wire" with a single argument, the AWG
number of the wire in question. That prints the wire-related
quantities (diameter, cross-section, resistivity, and current rating)
pertaining to that gauge:
wire 13
AWG dia sec rho amp
mm mm^2 Ohm/km A
13 1.83 2.62 6.58 17.5
wire 15
AWG dia sec rho amp
mm mm^2 Ohm/km A
15 1.45 1.65 10.5 12.5
To see more than one gauge at once, specify them in a "first last step"
format:
wire 10 20 2
AWG dia sec rho amp
mm mm^2 Ohm/km A
10 2.59 5.26 3.28 30
12 2.05 3.31 5.22 20
14 1.63 2.08 8.3 15
16 1.29 1.31 13.2 10
18 1.02 0.82 21 5
20 0.81 0.52 33.4 3.3
....
wire size (as in AWG or wire diameter).
How many amps can I send through one strand of a given flat band
cable and what is the voltage loss per meter? Given a coil
geometry, what size wire do I need so that the DC resistance of
the coil is 12 Ohm?
This is quite possible to do using web recources like AWG tables
and specialized calculators (not to forget your own pocket
calculator), but it gets tedious. So I have written a stand-alone
command line tool (a perl script) that answers similar questions.
The tool, called "wire" works with a number of wire parameters
(currently AWG, diameter, cross section, "ampacity" rating, and
resistivity (Ohms/km)). You can specify the value of any of these
as an entry parameter and it prints the values of the others, or a
selection of the others.
Given a coil geometry (inner, outer diameter and length), additional
coil parameters (number of turns, wire length, copper resistance,
inductivity) are available. These can also be entry parameters.
It is possible to specify multiple entry values in a single call,
using a from,to,step scheme, which results in a table of the requested
output parameters. A number of examples are appended below.
Now, my question is, would it be worth while to make this tool publicly
available? Is it superfluous? Not trustworthy enough? Command-line
tools are out of fashion anyhow?
Or is it too limited in scope? Should features be added? Non-metric
units, for instance? Materials beside copper?
If anyone cares, I have packed up a runnable version of its current
incarnation at
http://homepage.mac.com/anno5/FileSharing3.html
It's a tar archive that unpacks to a directory "wirepack" which
contains the script named "wire" and auxiliary material. The
script should be run from the directory "wirepack". It assumes
you have perl as "/usr/local/bin/perl". Calling "./wire -h"
produces a (lenghty) help message. "perldoc wire" shows a kind
of man page, currently mostly examples. The first few are
reproduced below.
Anno
----------------------------------------------------------------
In the simplest case, you call "wire" with a single argument, the AWG
number of the wire in question. That prints the wire-related
quantities (diameter, cross-section, resistivity, and current rating)
pertaining to that gauge:
wire 13
AWG dia sec rho amp
mm mm^2 Ohm/km A
13 1.83 2.62 6.58 17.5
wire 15
AWG dia sec rho amp
mm mm^2 Ohm/km A
15 1.45 1.65 10.5 12.5
To see more than one gauge at once, specify them in a "first last step"
format:
wire 10 20 2
AWG dia sec rho amp
mm mm^2 Ohm/km A
10 2.59 5.26 3.28 30
12 2.05 3.31 5.22 20
14 1.63 2.08 8.3 15
16 1.29 1.31 13.2 10
18 1.02 0.82 21 5
20 0.81 0.52 33.4 3.3
....
