Conversion table: American Wire Gauge [AWG] and metric
wire standards
The American Wire Gauge is a measure for how thick a wire is.
The number was originally related the amount of stretching that
was needed
to produce such a wire. The higher the number the thinner
the wire.
The metric system outside of the Americas uses the cross sectional
area in mm2 to describe
how thick a wire is. That cross section is directly
related to the resistance
of the wire.
The table below provides a conversion between the two units.
From the below table one could get the impression that there are
more
wire
diameters in the American system. The opposite is however true.
There are theoretically an infinite amount of diameters in the
metric system
as
the measure is directly related to the size. From an engineering
point
of view it makes however sense to use standard sizes and they are
shown below.
