Aluminum Spacer

[pete42]

If I understand you correctly you made spacers for your 4" 11/16 handy boxes?

what you may not know is they make spacers for handyboxes.

Any of the big building stores should stock them.

they come with "ears" that fit over the boxes screw holes and held together

with the supplied screws that came with your 4" or 4" 11/16 box.

no welding no sparks cheap and easy.

while larger gage wire is good it doesn't increase the amperage rating of the sockets

you panel looks good do you plan on grounding it?

pete

[pete42]

Good idea about wire size
maybe an electrical shop for expansion rings
then again if you have them already made might as well use them.

[eamarquardt]

Did you use 100% Argon when trying to weld aluminium with your Mig machine? CO2/Argon isn't the right gas for Al.

A small USPS flat rate box is five bucks. If you send em to me I can TIG them up or you can find a local welder to TIG em for you. Haven't done any MIG on Al but I'm sure that it's trickier than TIG for short run stuff.

How far do you want to space them out? If they don't make spacers that meet your needs, maybe just mill your spacers out of thicker Al stock or maybe even some plastic. If the boxes are plastic then plastic can't be all bad, right?

#8 wire is overkill (and this is coming from an overkill artist). The recepticles are only rated for 20 amps. If you were wiring your home 12 gauge would be sufficient. However, I looked up the capacity of wire and the chart (http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm) says 12 gauge is rated at 9.3 amps and 8 gauge is rated at 24 amps so I'm wondering why houses are wired to a different standard! But as I'm not aware of a rash of houses burning down because of undersized wire I think you'd be very safe using 12 gauge rather than the #8.

Lots of ways to solve the problem.

Cheers,

Gus

[pete42]

Did you use 100% Argon when trying to weld aluminium with your Mig machine? CO2/Argon isn't the right gas for Al.

A small USPS flat rate box is five bucks. If you send em to me I can TIG them up or you can find a local welder to TIG em for you. Haven't done any MIG on Al but I'm sure that it's trickier than TIG for short run stuff.

How far do you want to space them out? If they don't make spacers that meet your needs, maybe just mill your spacers out of thicker Al stock or maybe even some plastic. If the boxes are plastic then plastic can't be all bad, right?

#8 wire is overkill (and this is coming from an overkill artist). The recepticles are only rated for 20 amps. If you were wiring your home 12 gauge would be sufficient. However, I looked up the capacity of wire and the chart (http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm) says 12 gauge is rated at 9.3 amps and 8 gauge is rated at 24 amps so I'm wondering why houses are wired to a different standard! But as I'm not aware of a rash of houses burning down because of undersized wire I think you'd be very safe using 12 gauge rather than the #8.

Lots of ways to solve the problem.

Cheers,

Gus

I worked in an aluminum foundry they weld aluminum everyday I forget what gas I think nitrogen darn old memory.
12 gage wire should be able to carry 20 amps of current and most recepticles are 15 amp but 20 amp are available.
pete