[SpookyZalost]

Greetings! Zalost here with another tutorial!  This one is going to be a quite long and will cover several topics so I'm going to put an index here to link different subjects together.

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INDEX
Wire Basics, Calculations, Charts.
Wire Splicing Methods and Practices.
Making Plugs and Connectors.
Constructing an RJ45/RJ11 cable.
Advanced connectors and specialty tools.
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To start with what are cables?  well usually a cable is a strand of material, usually not made of fabric but woven much like rope and generally stronger.  Examples include steel cabling (as seen on suspension bridges), Electrical cabling (our topic of today), Network cabling (specific variant of the previous), etc.

Some key things to remember about electrical cabling specifically are the following.  The thicker the cabling the lower the gauge and the less resistance it has and the farther power can travel before losing some of it's overall power at the other end.  Why is Cable a lower gauge despite being thicker/larger?  Because the gauge actually refers to the number of times it was run through a machine to make it that size.

This used to be somewhat like a pasta maker but these days it's a kind of steel roller/press.  You start out with a metal rod, usually copper, and you feed it into a machine that squeezes and stretches it into a smaller longer size, rinse and repeat. 


There's also two different kinds of cable, bundled strand and solid core.  Bonded strand is what is typically used and makes very flexible cables, think of it like a copper rope that's been twisted together to make a thicker cable.  Solid core however is more common in scenarios where flexibility is less important such as the wiring in your house where its lower resistance matters over the distances in your walls.


As an example of wire gauges here are 3 wires, listed as 14, 10, and 4 gauge wire from smallest to largest.


Notice the stands in each one, all 3 are examples of stranded wire.  Be wary of fraying when working with these as it can make it so you have to cut and strip your wire all over again.

When working with wire something else you have to keep in mind is amperage.  Usually the lower the gauge the more amperage it can handle over a longer distance.  I use the following chart as a reference.


It doesn't cover stuff outside of what you would most likely be working with such as 00 or even 000 gauge wire which is more like what you'd see in power lines and power relay stations.

As for what gauge to use, you can use that chart and it's great if you're working with 12 volt but what if you want to use more voltage or need a specific wattage at the end?

Well you can use the following formulas to work that out.

Watts = Amps times Volts
Amps = watts divided by volts

So for example let's say you want to power a 15 watt bulb on a 120 volt circuit.  what gauge of wire would you use?

Well you would divide 120 by 15 which comes out to 8 amps.

Using the chart above you could run that for about 10 to 12 feet on 12 gauge wire, or over 20 feet using 10 gauge wire.

For a full reference chart of electrical calculations you can use this.


Your voltage divided by the watts your getting at the other end will actually tell you your resistance on a wire so if you're only getting 10 watts then your getting 12 ohms of resistance, meaning you're only able to get 10 amps of power that distance even if you're putting in 15 watts.

It sorta goes back and forth but the key thing is you want to make sure your wire gauge can handle the watts, amps, and volts you're feeding it or your Resistance will create loss and you won't get as much on the on the other end.  The easiest way to fix this is to just use a bigger wire and it doesn't hurt to do so outside of cost and of course a higher conductivity.  I usually put a fuse in circuit just in case but usually using 10 gauge in place of 12 should be fine since the difference isn't that much and your motor/bulb/etc will only pull as much as it needs usually.

Conversely when you under size your wires you end up not being able to provide enough amps/watts to your device and making it under perform.  If your wire is too small it'll have too much resistance and just burn through... this is actually how the filament on an incandescent light bulb works.  it's a high resistance thin wire that's heating up enough to emit light and eventually burns through.

Anyway that should cover the basics of wires, wire gauge, and how to figure out what kind and size you need for a project.

Stay tuned for more because we're going to cover a lot of topics from how to actually splice wires to making your own connectors and the use for things like bus bars and terminals.