[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by JesseK

I think my favorite engineering question of all comes up -- is the data that's being interpreted here used in the correct context or is the whole question negligible? I think that when you connect a 10AWG wire to a 12AWG wire that comes of the CIM, the 1 ampere improvement becomes diminished, if not altogether negligible.

For fun, I have some evidence where 1885 used the proper gauge wire but due to bad connections and/or soldering, a resistance was created that was high enough to burn through the plastic casing that housed the connection. This was discovered in Atlanta '07 coming off of one of our CIM motors. After it was replaced, we saw much improved performance in our speed -- go figure . Would have been interesting to have a current sensor giving us feedback data from this.

http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y95...t=WireBurn.jpg

/edit - note - the blue plastic housing got hot enough to melt and deform a bit, allowing it to sag to the side it's skewed on. The connectors appear to be difference sizes, however this is not the case. A terrible lesson to learn had this gone unnoticed for a few more matches.

Many crimp contacts intended for use with 10-12 AWG wire are insulated with yellow plastic. The blue-plastic insulated contacts are usually intended for use with 14-16 AWG wire. Forcing 12 (or 10!) AWG wire into a blue-plastic insulated contact usually results in some missing strands, a poor crimp, and a potential hot spot. That appears to be what happened in the case shown by your picture.