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12V 15 amp Neg earth in the Workshop ?????

poormansporsche

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alright good peoples,

Im building a custom loom for my electric, heated, ortho seats and need to create a power supply to test before I fit to the car. If I use a car battery for the 12V supply can i connect the earth wires of the loom to the negative terminal of the battery ?? I was concerned that if I did this it would send 60 amps round the loom ? Ive already fitted a 15 amp fuse at the very start of the loom ? I was thinking about buying a step down transformer but you are looking at about 100 quid to get one thats rated 15 amps ??

any thoughts

Cheers

Brett
 
A car battery will be fine for an improvised supply as long as you don't connect them up, get on with something else and then forget about them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohm's_law will take care of the rest but obviously things like heated seats and/or heated windows in cars also have thermal switches and/or timers to stop things getting too hot etc

If you want a cheap 12V DC power supply to save messing about with car batteries then this sort of thing will do the job DC 12V 24V 5V Universal Regulated Switching Power Supply for LED Strip CCTV - UK | eBay I've used 12 & 24V versions of them as a power supply for an electrolytic weld cleaning/passivating machine and to drive 12V DC motors using PWM (pulse width modulation) to control the motor speed
 
A 12V battery is easiest ... you'd need to know the maximum current that the seats could consume in order to buy a suitable mains power supply.
 
The seats will pull a hefty current - I think they have 20 or 30 amp fuses in the car. A car battery is idea for testing them

Mind your fingers round the base of electric seats. They are very powerful and it'd be a ridiculous way to lose a fingertip

Nick Froome
 

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