Guage of wire to use

[slookabill]

I'm curious what everyone uses for the size of wire that they use... I currently have some 22AWG wire that I've used a bit... now I just got a kit that's using far smaller/thinner wire. I'm just wondering what everyone else uses.

[Kylwell]

I use 32 awg 7/40 for damned near everything. It'll handle usual LED power loads w/o an issue and fits well into tiny places. The multi-strand makes soldering stronger and easier (I've found).

[DaveVan]

The biggest wire I can fit in. I keep 14, 16 and 22 on hand. Will buy smaller if I must.

[slookabill]

I use 32 awg 7/40 for damned near everything. It'll handle usual LED power loads w/o an issue and fits well into tiny places. The multi-strand makes soldering stronger and easier (I've found).

Just curious where you're able to find that size, not finding much on amazon(at least smaller than 22 AWG).

[Kylwell]

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Al ... tIxCnhXTa0

[tetsujin]

I use 32 awg 7/40 for damned near everything. It'll handle usual LED power loads w/o an issue and fits well into tiny places. The multi-strand makes soldering stronger and easier (I've found).

I use a similar wire, a stranded 30 AWG. I chose it years ago because I had been using 30AWG wire-wrap wire but needed something more resilient. 30 is thin enough for most jobs but occasionally it's a bit too big - so maybe I'll give 32 a try sometime.

To put the performance of this type of wire in perspective, there's basically two things we might need to be concerned about: the first is the resistance of the wire (how much power we lose by sending it over a thinner conductor) and the second is impedance (how much the wire will resist changes in current - which is mostly relevant to data lines and so on)

The resistance for the wire you linked is about 1.6 ohms per 3m of wire. So if you used 30 LEDs in a project, and 3m of wire, depending how you wired it up, as a rough estimate you might lose around .02W on a project that consumes around 20W.* So as you say, probably not significant.

The impedance simply wouldn't impact most hobbyists. It could be a problem for Arduino projects that use I2C or SPI to communicate with other devices in the project, though in that case you could get around the problem by reducing the data rate.

(* That assumes 30 LEDs at 20mA each - the exact losses would depend on the layout of the circuit. The .02W estimate assumes 1m of wire in the project, and it's all somehow carrying the full load of all 30 LEDs in parallel - 600mA... Power loss is proportional to the current through the wire, so if it became a problem you could reduce the power loss significantly by using a higher-voltage supply and driving LEDs in series.)

I do wish these wire spools weren't so expensive, though. 30m of wire does last a long time, but paying $30-$50 for a little bitty spool of wire is always kind of tough to swallow.

[EVApodman]

The current usage of most models is so low almost any small gauge wire will work. The main limiting factor on wire size is the space it has to fit inside.