How to know what wire to use

[Rootboy]

Ouch! And in manholes slathered with blue wire pulling jelly feeding nearly unbendable cable into conduits as the tugger trys to pull your fingers and hands into the conduit along with the cable is a lot of fun too.

Yeah, I'll pass. LOL!

On the plus side, you generally didn't get messed with by the other trades. If we couldn't beat them up outright, we could electrocute them.

 

[Rootboy]

2 cents worth ...

All depends on the voltage. AC is usually written as RMS, but the system has to be rated to withstand the peak voltage. The peak voltage is built into the AC rating of a wire's insulation so when you see wire rated at 110VAC it can withstand at least 170V. If we apply DC to that same wire we can put a higher voltage over it than the RMS AC voltage without the insulation breaking down and in turn transfer more power over it. Of course attention needs to be paid to the question of what happens if an arc forms somewhere too with DC. If that arc can make its way back into that same insulation it won't have any trouble melting it.

At one point in my career(s) I was an elevator mechanic. We had an old-timey elevator in a concrete plant (where they made the concrete, not mixed it), and it had 120 VDC controls. This way they could get away with using a resistor and a capacitor across the coils of relays to give them off delays.

Works great until an arc doesn't extinguish and melts down your contacts...

 

[Supervstech]

Nice! Although I would be concerned about the marks that the pins would leave in the sheath. But we used short-ish pieces of rigid to bend our cables back in the day and we frequently had to go back in with tape to "tidy" things up.

It does slightly mar thwn outer sheeth, but I’ve never had it break through. Works amazing with 4/0 Al and Cu

 

[Rootboy]

It does slightly mar thwn outer sheeth, but I’ve never had it break through. Works amazing with 4/0 Al and Cu

Just about anything will mar the outer sheath of THHN/THWN, so no foul there. But I hope to live out the rest of my years without having to do that again, I've gotten old.