Step down pin terminal?

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cornbread

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I keep running into this more and more where I have control wiring that is too large for the terminals on the equipment. Example the engineer specs out a #12 wag wire for voltage drop consideration and I have to land them in a VFD on a terminals that will accept a 16awg wire. In the olden time we would snip a few wires to make it fit, not allowed today. Typically I install some terminal strips to make the final connections. I've seen some butt splice reducers..would work but I don't like the look. I see they also have some pin terminal that look promising, but no one that I can find makes a reducer(at least for the small gage wire) #12 to #16 . Wonder how other folks handle this situation. Looking for any help I can get.
 
I would likely send an RFI to the engineer asking them how to handle it.

It is not that I could not come up with something it is just that I see it as the engineers problem to deal with as they created the mismatch.
 
Since this is for voltage drop, you should be able to downsize the wire to a size that will fit the terminal with a sta-kon or some other approved splicing method. You would just use a short piece of the smaller wire 6-8" long. It won't affect the voltage drop and is not a code violation.
 
I've seen some step down butt splices, it would work, but I was hoping to find a pin terminal to do the same. The installation would look nice.
 
If you have room in the panel then just add terminals and land your wires there. Run 16 awg to the drive.
As pointed out, voltage drop will not be an issue with the short run to the drive.
 
kwired said:
How long are the runs if this is control wiring and you have voltage drop issues?
Click to expand...

I'm with Kwired. It's seems you can run #16/18 for literally a mile without issue, so I'm curious how far you're going that requires an engineer to spec #12?
 
Cable lengths .. not real sure but I think with the routing in the cable tray we could be looking a 4000ft on way or 8000 ft over all. Why they spec out a #12 is beyond me but I think its being safe rather than being sorry. As I mentioned earlier we typically use terminal strips to down size the wire at the drive. I was hoping some one would have pin terminal to accomplish the same thing.
 
Take a look at these:
http://www.panduit.com/wcs/Satellit...tion_id=2201&locale=en_us&pagename=PG_Wrapper

cornbread said:
Cable lengths .. not real sure but I think with the routing in the cable tray we could be looking a 4000ft on way or 8000 ft over all. Why they spec out a #12 is beyond me but I think its being safe rather than being sorry. As I mentioned earlier we typically use terminal strips to down size the wire at the drive. I was hoping some one would have pin terminal to accomplish the same thing.
Click to expand...
 
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