Article 1012461 of alt.home.repair: Path: news.misty.com!not-for-mail From: nicksanspam@ece.villanova.edu Newsgroups: alt.home.repair Subject: Re: Charts for wire nuts and the combinations of wires that can go in each color? Date: 19 Apr 2008 16:26:53 -0400 Organization: Villanova University Lines: 27 Message-ID: References: <8XnOj.47364$rC6.19865@bignews4.bellsouth.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: acadia.ece.villanova.edu X-Trace: max.inside.misty.com 1208633211 3327 153.104.44.130 (19 Apr 2008 19:26:51 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@misty.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:26:51 +0000 (UTC) Xref: news.misty.com alt.home.repair:1012461 dpb wrote: >StarMan wrote: >> Does anyone know of a chart with a COMPREHENSIVE listing of the combinations >> of wire sizes that can go in each color of wire nut? http://www.idealindustries.com/media/pdfs/products/ideal_ul_listed_combinations.pdf >> I see that there are some capacities listed on the box when you buy a >> certain color but I'd like something I could have on the computer which >> gives as many combinations as possible and I could easily look up what I >> need. > >Maybe you've found your niche in life to create such an animal -- > >I would presume if you looked at the web sites of the various >manufacturers you would find the same information in forms from which >you could relatively easily construct such a table. If we knew how to automatically and efficiently pack unequal circles into a larger circle (with a "maximal hole degree algorithm"?), we might be able to figure out how many 22 ga wires we could fit into an orange wire nut with a minimum capacity of 1 18 ga + 1 20 ga wire and a maximum capacity of 4 16 ga + 1 20 ga wires. Wikipedia says an AWG N gauge wire has a 0.005x92^((36-N)/39) inch diameter. Nick