I'm suspicious.How do I tell if its 6 volt?

[cobblers]

Sticking half the volts through anything wont make it draw twice the current, if it did I could extrapolate that and be able to run my telly off an AA battery. That's just not how electricity works, even when we are dealing with inductive loads and shit. Motors and solenoids are strange, but you can pretty much still rely on ohms law when dealing with them when using DC. A coil of wire working as an electromagnet will behave roughly like a normal resistive load for the purposes of what we care about (it's all a bit crackers for the first 0.05 seconds then it settles down to normal)

 

Half the volts to a solenoid will mean it'll just throw the contacts out with a lot less force. It might not be enough to do the trick, but it won't burn out, it'll just be shit.

[hairymel]

a sensible, well written and understandable explanation,

 

i think that's what i was trying to say, but in English

[scaryoldcortina]

PMSL... I think it's time for this (again)

 

Maybe people are getting confused with voltage drop CAUSED by large current.

[hairymel]

but which side of the (smouldering) fence are you S.O.C. ?

 

my other half went to bed when i said that i had to tell the internet it was wrong

[Des]

I think I'd be tempted to test this the ghetto way, gather a battery, couple of wires, a known 12v solenoid and the supposed 6v one, flash the terminals of the 12v solly and observe the spark, should only be a little crackle and a quite modest amount of burny arcy smoke, if the purported 6v fella produces identical results then I would deduce it to be an imposter. I'd expect a straight up fo' real 6v solly to make a fair bit more sparkle, but have never tried, I suppose you could also connect a 12v and a 6v at the same time, one in each hand, the 6v should feel warm first, or maybe you can see the end of the windings where it solders onto its terminal, 6v would be a noticeably thicker gauge than 12v.

[scaryoldcortina]

but which side of the (smouldering) fence are you S.O.C. ?

 

the right side I'd suggest measuring the resistance of the solenoid coil, then using ohm's law to calculate the current requirement at both 6v and 12.

 

Say the coil is 1 ohm, V=IR, 6=1I, I=6A. At 12v it is going to draw twice that (12A) and the power (P=I^2R) is going to be 36 Watts at 6v (6x6x1) or 144W at 12v. In this (theoretical) example I'd guess at it being a 6v device, and proceed to testing it at 6V with a load on the plunger to see if it functions as expected (Try clamping it in a vice and pressing a 4lb hammer down on the plunger)

 

my other half went to bed when i said that i had to tell the internet it was wrong

 

edit to add - i think the confusion earlier stems partly from a confusion between wattage and resistance, and partly from misunderstanding power in general. A motor driving a load will need twice the current to make the same power if the voltage is halved. (P=IV, or Joule's law. Combining Ohm's law and Joule's law gives us the P=I^2R formula used above which only holds for resistive circuits)

[nigel bickle]

D' yer know? I havent a clue what half are you are saying!

 

I'm not going to get the old one back - he's not included it in the package, and I suspect there are dimensional 'differences' -which hopefully I wont notice. Additionaly- the 'relationship' has broken down.

 

I'm not going to fit it -I'm not going ot run current through it -I am going to find a man who 'knows'. I'll need his 'expert diagnosis' anyway if I need to pursue this legally.

 

And I will (-if its wrong) to stop this individual doing something similar to someone else- perhaps not so enquiring. Potentially very dangerous..