But the gauge is still popular because of its convenience. It stands for ‘American Wire Gauge.’ Some countries use mm to measure wire size. 6-Gauge Wire Compatibility Check Amp RatingĪWG is a unit of measurement. The electrician will remember to look at the material, setting, and temperature rating. You will most likely focus your attention on the gauge and its related amp rating. This is why many homeowners prefer to leave this question in the hands of a licensed electrician. You must account for all the factors that can increase or reduce the wire’s amp rating. However, that figure jumps to 50A for aluminum and 65A for copper once you raise the from 140 degrees F to 167 degrees F.Īs you can see, determining the amp rating of 6AWG conductors is not straightforward. You can see that 6AWG can withstand 55 amps if you have copper wire.īut if the cables consist of aluminum conductors, the amp rating falls to 40A, which doesn’t sound quite as impressive. How does this relate to 6-gauge wire? What breaker size suits this gauge? It may permit the wires to overload and melt before it takes action, which is problematic. It will deprive your home of electricity whenever you attempt to run it.īut if the breaker size exceeds the wire size, the breaker won’t trip fast enough. If the breaker trips too early because you connected an appliance that dramatically exceeds the wire’s rating, that appliance will become a nuisance. People don’t realize that the timing matters.

Otherwise, the circuit breaker will trip too early or too late. Therefore, the wire size should match the breaker size. If you have aluminum (or copper-clad aluminum), it can carry 40A at 60 degrees C, 50A at 75 degrees C, and 55A at 90 degrees C.Ī circuit breaker will trip when you overload the wires it is supposed to protect. How Many Amps Can 6 Gauge Wire Handle?Īccording to NEC, 6AWG copper wire can accommodate 55A at 60 degrees C, 65A at 75 degrees C, and 75A at 90 degrees C. Therefore, do not proceed until you know everything there is to know about 6AWG wires. If you pair a conductor with a heavier load than it can carry, you may start a fire. Copper Tube Joints Working Pressure Solder or Brazing Joints Based on ASME Standard B31.Cables are designed to accommodate specific loads.Chemical Finish Black Oxide for Copper, Mil-F-495.Smaller bare conductor diameters than those shown.Īmerican Wire Gauge (AWG) Wire Size Chart Conductors with compact and compressed stranding have about 9 percent and 3 percent, respectively, Using conductors having coated strands, different stranding type, and, especially, other temperatures changes the resistance.ģ. These resistance values are valid only for the parameters as given. Staff of Research and Education Associationġ. Reference: Handbook of Scientific and Engineering Data Cross-sectional area for busbars is typically rated in terms of circular mils (even for square and rectangular bars!), most likely for the convenience of being able to directly equate busbar size with round wire. Although a square or rectangular cross-section is very common for busbar shape, other shapes are used as well. Busbars are usually made of copper or aluminum, and are most often uninsulated.

In these instances, thick bars of solid metal called busbars are used as conductors. Stranded wire construction is favored, instead.įor some high-current applications, conductor sizes beyond the practical size limit of round wire are required. This is a handy rule to remember when making rough wire size estimations!įor very large wire sizes (fatter than 4/0), the wire gauge system is typically abandoned for cross-sectional area measurement in thousands of circular mils (MCM), borrowing the old Roman numeral 'M' to denote a multiple of 'thousand' in front of 'CM' for 'circular mils.' The following table of wire sizes does not show any sizes bigger than 4/0 gauge, because solid copper wire becomes impractical to handle at those sizes. The American Wire Gauge (AWG) measurement system was designed with a purpose: for every three steps in the gauge scale, wire area (and weight per unit length) approximately doubles. Instrumentation, Electrical, Control and Sensing DevicesĪWG Copper Wire Table Size and Data Chart 100 Degrees F AWG Copper Wire Size and Data Table Chart 100 Degrees F

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