1 Topic by nlancaster

  • nlancaster
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Topic: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

Anyone know what the wire gauge used on the solidoodle is? I am thinking of moving my control board away from the printer when I enclose it and may need to extend the wires on the motors. I am not worried about the wiring for the switches, lights, and fans, and for the heated parts I will be stepping up to a higher gauge anyway.

2 Reply by adrian

  • adrian
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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

The datasheet for the motors is AWG26, and I'm pretty sure thats whats also used on the connector side where extensions are used.

http://p.globalsources.com/IMAGES/PDT/S … 328001.pdf

3 Reply by nlancaster

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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

sweet thanks adrian.

Know of any issues with making the wires longer?

4 Reply by Tomek

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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

When you make the wires longer you will marginally increase the inductance. I have no idea if this will matter, but inductance limits how much current you can get into the stepper motor *if you're stepping the motor very quickly.*

If you plan on doubling the length of the wire, and are concerned about increased inductance, you should double the cross section of the wire. So use something like AWG25.  But, solidoodle uses rather low quality wires on the rest of the wiring harness, so if the steppers are no different, simply replacing them with higher quality AWG26 might be enough.

5 Reply by elmoret (edited by elmoret 2013-06-14 00:47:59)

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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

The change in inductance is probably negligible, it's barely calculable with double precision:

http://www.eeweb.com/toolbox/parallel-wire-inductance

Maybe you meant resistance? Still negligible.

AWG 25 doesn't have 2x the capacity or crossectional area of AWG26. It has about 1.3x of both.

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6 Reply by nlancaster

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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

thanks for the tips.

7 Reply by Staffordknot

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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

The feed wire to my steppers has awg 24 printed on them dunno what the stepper has as its all taped up.

8 Reply by ztoone

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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

Length of the wire is proportional to inductance. As you increase the length, the inductance will increase automatically.

9 Reply by Tomek

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Re: Wire Gauge used on steppers.

Inductance inside the motor is probably much more relevant. It's an inductor wound around an iron core, rather than the small industance of unwound wire.

Proportional to length of wire * and wire thickness.