Heres an idea for weight savings- maybe. I searched, but did not find any posts here on this. What about small aluminum tubing for esc to motor connections instead of copper wire? We are dealing with 3phase AC at this point- DC wiring specs end at the input to the esc. We are also dealing with considerable weight savings, ability to use bullet connectors (or just crimp), and minimal loss in conductivity. I'm thinking of 3, 3mm ID x 4mm OD tubing laid flat and siliconed together- but separated- at the ends and middle and use a anti-corrosion paste like No-Ox at the end connectors. Aluminum is widely used in other AC applications, could it work for us here too? Any comments?
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Well, google came through again. The tubing I referred to would be roughly equivalent to 10ga wire in cross sectional area, with safe ampacity of 20A and resistance of .0016 ohms per foot- same as 12ga copper wire.
Weight: Al 10ga wire weighs .152 oz per foot, Cu 12 ga wire weighs .809 oz per foot- yikes!! Al is 1/5 the weight of Cu for the same conductivity!?!? For my '12 feet of wire' example, it would shave off 7.8oz (220g) to use 10 ga Al wire instead of 12ga Cu. That's almost the weight of my motors!! I like those numbers! Anyone else wanna double check my math? Seems right, but...
Well for on thing you can't solder aluminum, so are you talking about crimping? If you are going to crimp them the you might as well use a OTS plated crimp splice or "butt" connectors. They are all ready insulated and optimized to do what they do.