I think that 32V on an automotive fuse does mean 32 Volt. It is not
an uncommon thing to find on an automotive fuse, in the United
States, anyway. It doesn't mean that it expects your car to run 32
Volts. It just means that the fuse is rated to function and be safe
at up to 32 volts. It's like having 112 mph speed rated
tires. They're safe up to 112 mph under specified conditions, but
you are not required to drive 112 mph.
While we're on the subject of fuses, I think there is a lot of
confusion about the concept of "slow-blow" fuses. If you stick a
thin piece of wire in a fuse, at a certain current it will melt and
open the circuit. If you coil that thin piece of wire around a
ceramic core, it will still melt at the same current, but the
temperature will rise more slowly because of the heat being absorbed
by the core. This is the concept behind the slow-blow
fuse. (Implementation details may vary.) Some types of equipment,
like electric motors, draw more current when they are starting up
than during continuous operation. The slow-blow fuse is sometimes
specified in such applications.
None of this has anything to do with the fact that the British rate
fuses using a different system than Americans. A regular style fuse
might be sold with a different amperage designation in England than
in the US, but that in and of itself does not make it a "slow-blow"
fuse. The speed of a fuse is an actual engineered parameter, and it
is different from the nomenclature issue that arises from different
countries using different rating systems.
-Steve Trovato
strovato@optonline.net
At 03:54 AM 10/7/2010, Paul Hunt wrote:
>Highly unlikely that an automotive fuse would say '32v' where the
>'v' means 'volts', if that is really what it does read then it
>almost certainly is some kind of part number.
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