The term electric conductor is used to designate a product intended to carry electrical current (energy), wires and electric cables being the most common type of conductor. Copper and the most commonly used metal in the manufacture of electrical conductors for residential, commercial and industrial installations.
A wire and a solid conductor, solid, insulated, used directly as conductor of electric power.
In turn, the word cable is used when a set of wires is assembled to form an electric conductor.
Depending on the number of wires that make up a cable and the diameter of each cable, a conductor has different degrees of flexibility. The Brazilian standard NBR NM280 defines some classes of flexibility for electric conductors, namely:
Class 1 are those solid conductors (wires), which have a low degree of flexibility during their handling.
Classes 2, 4, 5 and 6 are those conductors formed
by several wires (cables), the higher the class, the greater the flexibility of the cable during handling.
