Sewing on the road

[86Scotty]

Steve is correct but I think I would think of it a little different with such a small amount of power being needed. In other words, if you have an inverter, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Just watch your battery condition. That little power is peanuts.

[jage]

Originally Posted by velo47

Finally, I'm getting around to figuring out how much Katie can sew on the road.

Her machine, according to the label on the back, is 120V & 0.67A. If I'm doing the math right, that would be 120x0.67, or 80 Watts.

First, if you plug into shore power there is no issue. Just to be sure we're on the same page. What we're talking about is battery supported sewing, for which you need the inverter on. The inverter costs, whether you're sewing or not.

That said a sewing machine is ~100W and a coffee pot is ~200W and plenty of people use coffee pots in their SMB, although a pot is about 15 minutes to brew so already you're probably fine with a half hour of solid sewing.

Now for math I'm just going to copy straight from http://www.sportsmobileforum.com/for...r-size-80.html
etbadgers helpful post (changing all the math):

My guess is that the van has a 4D battery
Rough capacity [...] is about 212Amp Hours
you don't want to drain more than 60% (40% remaining)

So 212*.6 = 127 amp hours usable

Sewing Machine: 100W / 12V = 8.33 Amps
8 Amps * 4hr per day = 32Amp Hours

Or about 1/4 of your total available, roughly. You're running lights, fridge and other things daily, and the inverter is only about 90% efficient. I'm just going to casually ignore all that because a) you're probably not sewing for 4 hours straight b) you don't run the sewing machine at max speed 100% of the time. And even if you did you'd be fine.

[velo47]

Thanks everyone! It looks very doable which means Katie gets to do what she wants to do (quilting) while I get to do what I want to do (drink beer, er, I mean fish (and drink beer)).