Bosch Motor Wire Guage

[gail]

I was wondering what gauge wire should be used on the Bosch Drill Motors in Low gear.
thx

[gail]

Is the Minimum 10 guage ok, or should i try 8 guage?

[Placebo]

This isn't an offical answer but,

In the rule book it says in Additional Materials List:

Electrical Wire: Unlimited (must exactly match wire that was provided in the kit)

The wire in kit is 14

[Jeff Waegelin]

I think it's 10, and that should be okay.

[Mr. Mac]

We have always used #14 and have not had any problems (so far); if you want to go to a bigger guage you may; the Rules Committee already said it was OK (and we might be requiring it next year); the 30A breakers that protect the Victor circuits will trip off before the wires heat up when a motor is stalled, but I wonder what might happen if a drill motor runs at near stall speeds for more than a few seconds. #14 stranded wire should probably not be protected by a 30A breaker.

[Jim Meyer]

Last year we used 14 gauge wier connected to a victor. In the development phase a wire was pinched and shorted. The wire got hot enough to melt the insulation off, and also melted a pneumatic line next to the wire.

I'd recommend using the 10 gauge wire. It shouldn't get hot enough to melt the insulation if shorted. We had to replace a lot of wiring after that short. We probably wouldn't have had to if we'd used 10 gauge wire.

[Mr. Mac]

According to Jim Zondag, "at room temperature, #14 stranded pvc insulated wire is rated for 36A continuous." And because we limit current in all circuits to 30A, there should be very little risk of insulation melting, fires, or other safety concerns. Since you had it happen, I have to wonder if the slow-blow breakers are not taking a little too long to trip off in short-circuit situations. We went to the slow-blow breakers because the fuses were melting too quickly and ruining too many matches.
Jim points out that another issue is "the power loss due to voltage drop. A #10 wire has less than half the Resistance/Length rating compared to #14, so this will result in a
small reduction in input power to the motors if you use the smaller wire. Given the short wire lengths on an OCCRA robot, this should be nearly irrelevant. I would guess that the total contact resistance in most robot systems is higher than the wiring resistance anyway." We may be going to the larger wire next year, but for now it's an option.