Hmm... so my physics teacher said it would be ok to run AC through a spool of magnet wire.... however when i did this, the whole thing caught on fire.... hmmmmm
was it the green stuff on the outside of the copper? or would even just wire have gone insane??
Wow! Hope you are OK. The green stuff is usually laquer or enamel paint and it must have gotten pretty hot to catch fire. Perhaps your physics teacher could have suggested you check the resistance of the coil and the applied voltage to see if the wire size could handle the resulting current.
Try half the thickness of wire and triple the amount of turns... At least! Would it be easier to use a coil from something else I.E. a solinoid or relay? These coils have very thin wire and LOTS of turns. It is very difficult to make a coil like that without a coil winding machine.
what is this talk of only 8v?? i would like to run his off AC as to get alot of current (and also not kill batteries). so are you recommending some sort of voltage limiting thing? or to use batteries?
David - What are you trying to do? It sounds like you are attaching the 110 volts AC from your house mains to different things. Please be careful.
If I wanted an electromagnet that would run on 110 volts AC, I would buy a 110 voly relay and remove the coil. I know it has the proper amount of wire to handle the voltage.
just a normal wall outlet...
i think i am going to end up having to get a solenoid so its already coiled... i found something that said 30 AWG wire is only like .1 ohms/foot
that seems like i'd need a lot of feet..... lol
i'll let you know when i find something that will fit the roll of this coil
so you want a coil gun....
it generates a great magnetic field and throws something ....interesting...
ok, back to resistivity, for copper it is rCu=1.6E-8 ohm x m
so the resistance for a coper wire is.....R=rCu x lenght/surface
where surface is in square meters and lenght is in meters...
alsol, but this is not verified info, a wire is said to hold 4A/square mm....not sue about this