Well, I have yet to see anyone do this so I am going to try my hand at it.
Everyone talks about wire size and how this and that wire is crap. But, just how worthless are those BS brands?
Today I took scraps from quite a few brands and did a little comparison. 6inches of each brand and weighed the amount of wire per section.
***I am not sure if all the brands are Oxygen Free Copper*** Some may be steel, CCA or other. Some brands were tinned (as you can see in pics). I had no way to test copper purity, this is simply measuring mass of the 'stuff' under the casing.
This should give a little idea of just how much you are getting per foot. In the charts, I converted mass per 6inches to mass per foot.
I would say to bench test it you would just need to apply a small current and measure the resistance, no? 6" lengths I would think would be an unfair measure seeing as the resistance would be compounded by actual length but still, any difference is still a measure. Since the strand count improves the flow I would assume that would play a roll, as well as other factors.
A 1/0ga test would be great! I just had ALOT of scrap 8ga and 4ga at the shop and did this one.
So, how about this. Lets compile a list of 1/0 wire. If anyone has some scrap, lets say at least 1.25 to 1.5ft, so I can cut them down to 1ft. I would be more than willing to test it. I would rather not have people buy wire, just whatever you have as scrap...but if you wanna buy some and ship it to me, thats fine too.
Now, you realize that this is not a highly accurate test. The best way I can think of to accurately test would be to take ~100ft of a given wire and run current though it. Test loss from end to end. Also test resistance.
But, OFC vs OFC...my test at least give an idea as to just how much copper you are getting for your $.
Email me at Audible.insanity@gmail.com if you have some scrap 1/0 you would like to contribute.
What really drove me to do this test is that the last order few orders I made w/ Xscorpion, it seemed like the 4ga was getting smaller. I had to check. As I expected, it was pretty small...I have yet to run into a problem w/ it though on 1200w or so systems. Did a DDm1a's w/ it and no problems....the 1/0 has always been pretty beafy though. I have a hard time getting it into my IA 20.1, DDZ2Hv and Cory's M3's. Everything else the company makes is great, had no problems anywhere with them, awesome dealer support and shipping shipping prices w/ big orders.
The real test would be resistance over a 1000ft strand, but I doubt anyone would be willing to send me that much 1/0 for testing...lol
even with a 1/0 test it wouldn't do much good. This is a cool test but won't tell you anything other that which wire wieghs more. Canaan said it himself this is just a test of mass. say you have type A wire that is CCA and weighs X amount Then you have type B wire that is 100% copper but weighs a small amount less than type A. BUT type B wire has a larger current carrying capacity. A load test would be a better idea.
Its nice to see someone doing some unbias testing though.
