thank you for explaining UK plugs and WHY they are wired that way. being from the US ive always known plugs to have individual circuits, with individual fuses and i had seen other videos and never knew they why .. so thank you for answering a question ive had for years!
it was originally to make wiring simpler (also possibly to save copper, but that may be apocryphal) during the rebuilding after ww2... and the ring circuit was so successful it's still being installed today. To be honest though, I install as many 20 amp radials these days as ring mains* because consumer units (breaker panels) are available in larger sizes now. *yes I know it's now known as a 'ring final circuit' but it used to be called a ring main in older versions of the regs ;)
Plugs with partially sleeved earth pins are guaranteed to be absolutely always counterfeit, and are not allowed to be sold, even though they're for non-earthed applications.
Absolutely correct. Also any UK or Shuko (or any other kind) power pluigs with CE markings - UK law specifically outlaws CE markings on BS1363 plugs and the CE itself bans CE markings on european plugs as they are regulated by _national_ (not international) standards. You'll sometimes see unsleeved live/neutral pins on older plugs. These are still legal (grandfathered in) on existing flexes, but not legally allowed to be reused, even if being refitted to the same flex.
Perfectly legal on double insulated equipment BUT if they are on an unplugable lead then they MUST only have a two pin connector on the other end (like a figure 8 connector) that is impossible to plug into any sort of earthed 3 pin connector.
To clarify that for anyone - plastic earth pins are ok on double insulated equipment or on (otherwise OK) figure-8 connector cables. Partially sleeved metal earth pins are _never_ OK, even under such circumstances.
Correct, because partially sleeved earth pins will only make contact whilst you are inserting it into the socket, once the plug is pushed fully into the socket the earthing is broken because the contact inside the socket is in contact with the plastic sleeve, not the metal part of the pin.
always nice of counterfeiters when they leave such a (relatively) obvious tell that their cable is worthless crap. i just wish that more people were able to spot it-most folk seem to assume that anything you can plug into the mains must be safe to do so, but this is tragically not always the case.
As a Canadian whos blown many fuses in older apartments and homes and tripped circuit breakers, I wish we had individually fused recepticles or plugs, that way if I short something I'm working on, it'll just blow its own fuse rather then knock out half the house blowing a fuse or tripping a breaker.
Ellenor Malik Well I mean, most electronics have internal fuses, but it'd be nice if the plug had its own fuse. But aside from internal fuses, its not mandetory (nor have i seen it in Canada) that plugs or sockets have fuses.
We don't need fuses in our plugs , if it's a problem just use a power bar with a breaker in it usually rated a bit lower than the wall outlet, the idea of a 32 amp cable @ 240 volts a few millimeters below the surface of the wall is so incredibly dangerous , imagine driving a nail or screw into it as you try to hang something on the wall you would die instantly. Here in North America you would need to drive a long nail or screw into it the closest it is to the finished surface of the wall is about 1.75" it would instantly trip the breaker and you are still alive to hire an electrician to replace the damaged cable.
+Stephen Huxtable At short circuit voltages? I don't think there'd be much of a problem. Maybe some sparks at worst. That's assuming he had the voltage limit set fairly low on the power supply. You can see the display reading 15.2, and I'm *assuming* that was the limit and not the actual voltage.
Hi +Alex C - No animals were hurt during the filming of this video :-) - The 15.2V was the actual voltage at the output terminals of the power supply, which is a totally safe voltage to be playing around with. There was no risk whatsoever of electrocution when I did this - the only real risks were from the molten plastic (which could have stuck to their fur), or from the plastic fumes as it burned off (which is why I filmed this outdoors in the first place). Hope you're having a good weekend. Cheers!!
Jim Conner I know that already - read the comment I was replying to. I'm surprised that was the actual voltage. That would mean the cable had a resistance of about 3 ohms, which seems a bit high unless it's got quite thin wires.
One addition, a bit late, but worth making the point... when throwing away a plug like this, hit it with a hammer, twist the pins off with pliers, or something similar, so some kid can't pick it up and plug it in. Same applies to compliant moulded plugs that have to be cut off to make a wired connection :)
I save them to catch out lazy dishonest PAT testing companies., which I have done several times, which is quite worrying when companies are paying them lots of money to supposedly keep them safe.
It's a myth that the fuse in the plug is only because the UK uses ring mains (and then not all the time). Even if a circuit was fused for 13 amps, the thin cables for appliances like table lamps or those power adapters can't. A damaged cable can be overloaded and cause a fire. Hence a 3 amp fuse on a table lamp will be safer, ring main or not. In addition, 13 amp sockets can be used on high powered radial circuits. Typically cooker circuits rated at 32A or 40A were often installed with a 13 amp socket on the switch plate in kitchens. The fused plug is simply a good idea as it can be tailored to the appliance and the flexible cord. That can't be done with general purpose sockets. Yes, a ring main makes it more important, but it applies equally to any circuit which has a higher current rating than a flexible cord that might be plugged into it. nb. the lack of a fuse isn't the only reason those plugs don't comply with UK standards.
I've actually seen plugs like this on kit in a hospital. Even worse, one piece of equipment at church has a plug like this but with no insulation on the pins (legal requirement since 1984, and NOT permitted on the earth pin which your example has). All of these plugs are illegally small in body too. The wire in many is pretty awful as well.
Hi +Phil Reynolds - I'm very surprised that these plugs would show up in hospitals as they normally have lots of regulation on medical-grade electronics. These plugs are wrong in so many ways, and having taken a closer look at the conductors, I'm pretty sure they're not actually copper at all... the metal looks and behaves more like some kind of bronze (which is an alloy of copper and tin)... I suspect these conductors are made of an alloy of copper and whatever leftover bits of scrap metal they could melt in to bulk up the quantities. Cheers!!
+Jim Conner China is currently pumping something they call CCA. It's "cuprum covered aluminium", and it is in fact aluminium centre with a copper vapour plating. It is a bit better than just aluminium wires as it doesn't have all the negative mechanical properties, but it is still a piece of c... The whole problem is that people look at value and not at the quality. And 2x4mm^2 sounds better than 2x2,5mm^2, even tho the second one is actually better...
Hi +mrkv4k - It looks and sounds like CCA is almost certainly what these wires are made from. They've got a resistance of about 1 ohm per metre which is pretty awful... I wouldn't even wire up a doorbell with wire that bad. Thanks for taking the time to comment - sorry it took me so long to reply. Cheers!!
Good demonstration! With a total resistance of about 3 ohms for that short cable the manufacturer obviously wasn't wasting money on much copper. Worth pointing out that the UK system allows for fusing at just 1A which, with the right plug & fuse would make even thin rubbish cable like that reasonably safe. Not something one can say for the Schuko or US style systems.
In fact, do not throw the wire away, report it to your local trading standards with full details of where it was purchased from. They won't be able to get your money back but hopefully they can stop more of them coming into the country and being sold. If you don't know who or where your local trading standards is they can be found through your local council.
Sometimes I tend to forget that most of the safety precautions in place are there for a reason. It's easy to get complacent and think nothing can go wrong.
FesterWerks 99.9% of the time you can get away with flouting the regulations - the seller of these dodgy plugs will get away with it this time because I threw them in the bin rather than plugging them in... but not everyone out there has a background in electronics and most folks won't even spot the difference between the plugs. I can easily imagine the situation where my parents or my kids grab any old cable as long as it fits in the socket. Hope you're well. Cheers!!
you got 5 amps at 15 volts dc through it, thats 75 watts, Now do the same test at 240 volts ac....... (You wil trip a 20 amp breaker before the wire even gets warm)
the test is not demonstrating what happens when a dead short occurs... its simulating a high load over time... its not the voltage that makes the wire get warm its the current... the current going threw the wire was well within the "rating" of 10 amps.... so if u plugged a gaming computer into this wire... 15 minites into playing your game.. the carpet behind your desk would have melted plastic on it and very possibly a bare 240V live wire... at least for this type of plug
This test demonstrates an overloaded cable. If that cable was used on a 10 Amp heater the 20 Amp breaker would not trip during the overload. It will only trip when the Active and Neutral conductors short out within the cable, and that does not always happen before the PVC catches fire.
'just throw it in the bin' - great advice. I like to make short 'kettle' cables by rescuing the power cable with plug from old microwave ovens and putting a cheap screw-terminal 'kettle' connector on the end. The cable is a nice heavy and robust gauge and these stay cool at 10A.
Hi Jim, Power has nothing to do with the cable dimensioning just current. Your power supply can only deliver 15V and since your current limit was set much higher the actual 6A current has to do with the cable resistance. So 15V / 6A = 2.5ohm. Do not know the cable length but I will estimate around 1.2m so for a complete circuit that is 2.4m It means that the copper conductor inside has a resistance of around 1ohm per meter. That means that the copper conductor inside is at best 0.02mm2 (AWG34) and that is absolutely unacceptable even for a digital signal cable. Can you cut the insulation to see the copper. I'm extremely curios but that seems to be the case based on your test. The copper wire in that cable is actually thiner than what you find in a 5A fuse the only thing helping that copper wire not breaking was the molten plastic insulation that helped with the cooling of the copper.
Hi ***** - With hindsight, I should probably have used a different power supply to test this out with. I used that supply because it can deliver >32Amps of current which is what our ring mains are rated at in the UK. I was expecting that cable to be able to handle at least it's rated 10amps of current, but that wasn't the case. I just put the remaining non-melted cable across my multimeter just now and it seems that we're looking at a resistance of around 1.3 ohms per metre which would indicate somewhere around 36AWG wire being used internally which is (so the inernet tells me) around 0.127mm diameter.... so... I've just cut the cable open, stripped one of the wires inside it and measured it with my calipers.. and yep... they tell me 0.13mm for the conductor. I've seen better wire than this used for hooking up doorbells. According to a chart I just found, 36AWG is good for around 0.21Amps for chassis wiring, or 35mA for power transmission (i.e. for this cable). Given that the plug on the end of the wire has 10Amps moulded into the plastic, this is just a lethal combination. Hope all is going well with the BMS v2 and your impressive LCD driver code. Cheers!!
Jim Conner Hi Jim, Yes it seems I was a bit optimistic with AWG34 :) still I never seen anything like that before not even on a cheap USB cable. Yes the SBMS is progressing the HW design is done just ordered the parts for beta and the PCB's then I can continue with software. Is a bit more work than I anticipated but this happens all the time :)
Heh.. more work than expected... yeah.. tell me about it :) - I'm a great fan of telling colleagues that 'the difficult bits are easy and the easy bits are difficult'... The horrendously complicated technical wizzardry aspect always seems daunting when you're planning a project and don't know quite how to achieve it... whereas the easy bits you've done before seem like they're a simple chore that'll take you no time.... And then when you actually get stuck into a project, you solve the technical wizzardry in no time, but the easy chores take forever and turn out to be far more complicated than you ever anticipated - I'm convinced that this is the reason why so many IT projects go drastically overbudget. Cheers!!
Jim Conner :) Yes all the small simple things add up to much more than you expect. That is why is a good thing to include large margins in the time-line. I think those that build the cable you tested in this video had no budget problems :) For HW is normally quite easy to get a good budget estimations there are just small things that can affect that like the exchange rate in my case :) CAD drop quite a bit since I made the budget so components cost increased accordingly. But the SW part that is alway hard to estimate is better to leave large margins and if you have time you can implement some new futures or test it more. People got lazy and prefer to send a device as is then use the customer for testing and provide firmware updates :)
***** That is a good point! While I think it won't be that bad AWG34 it maybe that the cable has just something like AWG24 (0.2mm²). Maybe Jim can cut open the not burned part of it and actually measure the diameter of the copper cores inside. But maybe that piece of crap is already in it's home, the bin :)
We spent about NZ$5000 a few years ago having our house rewired as the old wire sheathing was disintegrating, (a common problem for late 50's early 60's houses here in NZ due to a faulty manufacturing process unknown at the time.) Our real old fuse box was replaced by up to date RCD circuit breakers. This means you don't need separate RCD units when working outside or in slightly damps areas. Luckily the electrician and his apprentice didn't have to cut any wall boards. Our house is from the mid 50's so has noggins/dwangs about every 600mm between the studs, so wires couldn't simply be dropped down. We had new hot points put in around the place which meant running the wires from under the house. I think the average number of double outlets per room is about four, with quad outlets in a number of rooms too. The electric range is 30amp and on it's own circuit. Oh and in our converted triple garage (to which runs a 20amp cable underground from the house and has it's own circuit breaker) we've 5 doubles and a quad plus an 8 plug multi box, with the attached tool shed having 10 doubles, one of which is a 13amp. And there's 2 outside hotpoints too. All hot points are 10amp bar 1. We have a lot of electrical appliances, tools and A/V things.
There is a big difference between using a cable to conduct current towards a load and using the cable as a load itself. I’m guessing the wire gauge of the plug was around 17awg(1mm2) @ 1 meter. If you were to pass 240vac through this cable into a 10amp load you would see around 0.33vac drop. This would result in a power loss of 3.3watts which the cable would dissipate itself as heat. In your case the wire has to dissipate approximately 95watts which is going to make a lot of heat and obviously melt the cable. I would really like to see you revisit this topic with a more sound testing method.
Hi - glad I saw your video. I got one of these exact dodgy plugs with a Hard Drive dock that I bought from eBay. The dock itself has a dodgy on/off switch on it. I think I’m now going to throw the whole thing in the bin.
The other lethal thing about the plug is that the metal on the Earth connector is not the full length of the pin. In most power sockets, the spring connectors make contact over a small area, and a partially-inserted plug without a completely metal Earth pin might not be connected to Earth whilst still being connected to the Live terminal. If ever you see a plug with half of the Earth pin being plastic, then you really need to destroy it and replace it. If they've cheated-out on the plug, then I automatically syspect the whole cable, and maybe the associated equipment too.
I learnt that a lot of these cables in conjunction with these plugs may read something such as "0.5mm" on the side, when in reality, if you chop it open, you will find a thick insulation around a mere three or five strands of copper, which come think of it could cause the reactions seen in this video.
Considering the sheer resistance offered by the illegal cable, I suspect that it would still have gone up in smoke if it had been fitted with a fused plug at manufacture. If anything, the cable AND the plug are rubbish. It would be interesting if you could compare this with a legal power cable, tested the same way as you did the first one.
Hi +CNCmachiningisfun - That cable measured as 2.1 Ohms per metre... At it's 10A rated load, it'd have a 21V voltage drop, and hence a 210Watt heat output from the wire - It certainly won't take long to melt the plastic like that. A 2-amp load would probably be just-about OK on that cable (4.2 watts of heat dissipated across a metre isn't too bad). I like your idea of testing a legal cable... I might try that at the weekend. Cheers!!
Jim Conner Thanks for the reply. Those cable performance stats are really quite scary, as they describe what you might call a 'linear heater', as opposed to a power cable. I look forward to any updates on your findings here. Keep up the good work.
I think it was a little oversimplification saying in many countries each socket has its own line. In the U.S. most lines will be divided into rooms, so a bedroom or the bathroom will have its own line. The exception would be the kitchen where some outlets do have their own dedicated circuits, such as the fridge and the counter outlets.
I had a cable like that with the clover shaped unfused plug. I DID use it, but I used it by plugging it into a fused double-plug with a 2Amp fuse. I didn't get any overheating problem with it, but another potentially lethal fault. The insulation wore through on it an exposed the live wire. I immediately removed it from the supply, and threw it straight into the bin. It's not just the no fuse and fire risk of these cables, it's also the low quality of the insulation and risk of a shock.
Thanks +Kacey Anders - Yes - you're right - I've heard from others that the conductors don't alway run through the centre of the plastic insulation and sometimes are frighteningly close to being exposed.... To make matters worse, I don't think the conductors are actually made of copper either.... They seem to be some kind of alloy of copper+other... They're not bright and shiny like copper, and they don't bend the same way as normal copper wire does. There's no better place for these cables than straight in the bin. Happy Christmas!! Cheers!!
Great Video, Jim, which clearly explains by demonstrating what can happen to the cables. Everybody (specifically those not in the know) Overloading electricity cables causes fires, major fires. DO NOT under *any* circumstances defeat the fuse cartridge or fuse wire by using aluminium foil, bolts, off cuts from 6" nails and the like - doing so may cost you and / or the people you love their lives in the most horrendous way imaginable
@electrodacus though you are right in that the current dictates the area needed of the wires, power dissipation is I x I x R (I squared x R). As he had put a short across the IEC socket, the load was in fact the cables own resistance, so the power being delivered was being dissipated in the wires, hence they got hot! Though thicker wires have less resistance (assuming the same conductor material), thicker wires also mean more area for the heat to disperse - less heat density - so the heat doesn't reach such a high temp. For the record the electric meter tails in one house I visited with an electric oven, two hobs, washing machine runnng, and electric kettle on were noticeably hot, they were running at ~34C. Though I was concerned, I'm told they're rated at 40C. I seriously advised them have them replaced with the next size up!
Big Clive would have done it better, he'd have found a way to stick the full 32A through it. Rodalco2007 would have done it even better than Big Clive. He'd have stuffed a couple of hundred amps through it. More if he thought there were any wasps in it.
I had one of those - looked identical from the to, but the pins weren't even shrouded! Fingers touched both live and neutral unless you were really careful when removing. Always turned off before unplugging with that one! Now in bin.
+dopiaza2006 I hope you cut the cord into two or three pieces first; I always do that with dangerous or worn out power leads or extension cords so nobody can dig it out or discover it and possibly attempt to use it (I would feel responsible if they did and were injured or heaven forbid, killed).
What this does go to prove is the absence of the fuse in the plug is the least of the worries. A standard 5A cartridge fuse will take forever to blow at even 6A, if it ever does. What's the real problem is the tiny gauge of the wire being used. Making a reasonable guess at the length of that cable, and with a resistance of around 3 ohms, the cross-sectional area can't be more than 0.01 sq mm, which is insanely low. The smallest gauge flexi cable commonly used on UK system is about 0.5 sq mm. Such cable would need a fuse of perhaps 250ma of or so.
It should be noted that neither do other countries have one wire for each socket. The sockets are chained with one typically 10 A breaker though there is no ring.
Interesting setup - both the proper and demo of improper UK wiring. I've been into the breaker box of several houses here in the US and I guess we do sort of have a "ring mains" setup. Each circuit does have more than one plug on it. There is a breaker though in the distribution box and a dead short like you demo'd would simply trip the breaker and that circuit would become inert. It makes me wonder how much negotiation goes into international projects like ISS or shipping/aircraft where they much be able to plug in to devices/mains/ or have devices plug into them that were made in many different places.
In addition to the video: In modern houses in the UK the MCBs are B-type, which means: The short-circuit trip of the MCB is tripping only immediatly if the current raises up between the three and five times of the nominal current. For safety reasons it should be calculated with the higher value, in the case of a B32 A: 160 A. In Germany we're using B16 A for the sockets, and in regular three B16 for the kitchen stove (three-phase current). And I think this cable does not have copper conductors. I think they are actually made of aluminium. That's the only explanation why this cable heated up so much at this low current. The manufacturer should be strangled with this cable, it's a deathtrap!
Did not know this UK detail. Modern houses have fuseboxes with fuses for every thing, like in a car. Usually electronics have built in fuses so why an extra fuse in the plug. A lot of cables are ratet below fuse amperage, 2A Europlug, but during a short circuit, they will blow the fuse as they can widthstand much more for a short time. I wonderd if AC amps generate more heat than DC even if it's the RMS value.
it protects the cable overheating, you may have a partial short, not total, taking say, 6 amp, on a 3 amp cable, it will eventually overheat and may catch fire, but not blow the fuse or trip the breaker in the fusebox/consumer unit..
States we have 15 amp branches per room (new code is arc fault protected). 20 amp bathroom & outdoor socket branch all on the same branch with gfci protection. 30 amp kitchen branch with a separate supply for dishwasher, garbage disposal (a in sink shredder), refrigerator and oven. Amp rating for each are various but mostly 20 & 30amp. Total average supply amp is 200 with 2phase 230vac. Our power boxes are pretty standard squareD breakers. Its funny that the plug you tested was 10 amp. I am willing to bet the plug was a usa plug modified with a simulated uk plug. Most wired appliances use a 10amp 115vac cord. I am willing to be that if you lowered your supply voltage to 115 it would take the full 10 amps. Counterfeiters rarely mark things with science.. they just copy and paste whatever they find first.
In Canada, we have done away from archaic obsolete fuses and use square D breakers that can be reset multiple times and our wiring is different and we don't use switches on the outlets a fuse is a one time use only breakers are multi-use
Well I have an RCD so it will detect the sine wave being weird and turn the power off, also an MCB will trip because it will take more than 30amp (for a few ms) which will also trip it.
I've always wondered, why not put the fuse in the wall socket instead of the plug? Seems like you would need less fuses overall, and you still get overcurrent protection. Basically i'm thinking of a GFI socket (only not as touchy of course)
Hi +Gunhaver - I believe they do something similar to that in Australia, with each socket limited to 10A maximum output (GFIs in the breaker box), but they also ensure that all devices plugged into a socket are equipped with a cord capable of handling 10A current - The equipment at the other end of the power cord then has it's own internal fuse to protect it's own circuitry - It's a pretty good solution, but the down-side is that even if your device is only using 0.1A it must still have a 10A rated power cord.... The UK's fused-plug system was implemented as a measure to save on copper, so we can have power cords rated at only 3A which will use about 1/3rd of the copper. Cheers!!
We got a load of them with PSUs we bought for work. I binned them all but not before chopping the plugs off so no one could fish them out of electrical waste and use them.
5 amps at 15 volts equals 3ohms for about 1 meter of cable (1.5 for Live and 1.5 for Neutral. Real 10 amp cable has a resistance of 18 MILLI ohms per meter. The amount of copper in it must have been tiny, if any
I remember when someone showed me how to place a 2 pin/6A Euro plug into a UK socket by placing something in the ground hole to release the shutters in the socket. Seemed like a good way for a student on a budget not to get a proper fused adaptor, but I was told I then have a 32A mains fuse protecting a 6 A rated circuit. Some overseas makers are notorious for shortcuts. That's how they get the price down.
This video has a lot of comments about the UK electrical system. The big advantage of the ring main system is this: you can have as many 13A single and double socket outlets as you like (within reason) in a defined area (it can serve an area of no more than 100m2). All fed via a single fuse or MCB (miniature circuit breaker). If a fuse is used, it's rating is 30A. If a MCB is used, it's rating is 30A or 32A.
By having a fused plug, the mains sockets and outlets can all take the same physical plug. Unlike the previous UK electrical system, which had 2A, 5A, 10A and 15A outlets, with the two lower rating sockets having different sized plugs and sockets (known as the round pin plugs). The fuse allows proper fuse discrimination. So the fuse nearest the fault blows in the event of an large overload or short circuit. As stated in the video, the fuse in the plug protects the electrical flex.
Earth leakage or RCD devices do not trip out due to overloads or short circuits between the line (live) and the return (neutral) conductors, they only trip out if there is a different current flowing between the line (live) and the return (neutral) where they pass through the RCD. This occurs if electrical current is leaking to earth (ground).
Does the plug have the BSI 'kite' mark and the number of the relevant standard? It looks like a job for the Trading Standards department of your local authority.
Not wanting to nit pick, but you'd have had the same result with a 10A or 13A fuse and a 5A current, indeed even British Standard plugs get hot under a 13A load. 16A and 32A plugs aren't fused either, many of them are used for much lower current appliances than their breaker rating too, sometimes only a few hundred watts, with their water resistant(ish) design being the attractive feature. There must still be thousands of toothbrush and shaver chargers plugged into shaver sockets on regular ring main or lighting circuits.
I don't find that the CRI of LED's renders the colour codes on resistors very well at all! Really need 1 water clear orange LED in the strip for every 8 or 10 cold white/warm white.
Ok, so I am trying to understand the functional difference between ring type and direct (Like we use in the USA). In the US the Circuit breaker is to protect the building wiring NOT the device or its wiring, and we don't have problems here. That being said, we use 120 VAC which would bring you wattage down by half. Also, the old standard was three different plugs according to current (10 amp, 20 amp, 30 amps). Therefore, you couldn't plug an under rated cord into the wrong outlet. But that has all but dissapered...I don't know why but I would say because the cords are better designed?
I think we get complacent when it comes to cables. Some months ago i was getting a computer ready to reinstall software. Plan being to leave it alone whilst i did other things outside. About a minute after switching on the cable suddenly burst and sparks began to be emitted and burned like explosive fuse wire. Not sure if it blew the fuse, UK plug. I just switched it off and threw the cable away. Doesn't bare thinking what would have happened if it failed several minutes later. Cable was lying on the carpet.
To be honest I've never been able to grasp the technical advantage of ring mains. The way I see it, a 32 A ring mains wired with 2.5 mm2 T&E uses slightly MORE copper than two 16 A radials using the exact same T&E but minus the section that completes the ring. Same amount of power, slightly less copper used, maybe minimally higher voltage drop but no fuses necessary. Just staying with BS 546 15 A but dropping the requirement for each socket to be on a dedicated circuit would have achieved essentially the same result in terms of available power, minus the need for plug fuses. And of course a new plug doing away with the sheer number of different BS 546 sizes could have been introduced using 15/16 A radial circuits too. My only explanation is that historically someone was really in love with the concept of the ring mains and managed to convince everyone else.
+Ragnar8504 Surely the copper savings of ring mains increase the more sockets you have? Put four sockets in close proximity and you'll see what I mean.
i got given 2 of those plugs about a year ago (i think i still have them) dont use them because of the fact there is no fuse and as you said if something was to happen theres no fail safe, the fuse is suppose to be the first point of protection, if the fuse doesnt pick it up and blow then the next point is the RCD on your fuse board (had a soldering iron that went short circuit, didnt blow the fuse but did trip the RCD and yes it was using the right fuse, a 3 amp one)
Hi Jim, thanks for an excellent demo. Were the conductors actually copper? I have heard that some of these specimens are using copper coated ferrous material. Also beware of the plugtops even if they contain a fuse, they too can be very much substandard in devious ways.Cheers.
Hi Hassan. I still have one of those two cables kicking around with the conductors exposed, so I've just given it a close look. The conductors look quite a lot like copper, but are a bit darker... they look rather like grubby copper. The wires don't move like copper though... They don't bend the same way... They seem to spring back from whatever position you move them to as if theve got some spring steel in them. I tried a very stron neodinium magnet on the conductors, but got no reaction, so definitely not ferrous. I'm really not sure what they'e made of now... but I'm sure it's not any kind of high quality copper. I've just done some quick googling on identifying metals and I'd say it looks and behaves most like bronze (an alloy of copper and tin). I suspect there's more than just tin and copper in the mix though. Cheers!!
I've got lots of electrical equipment I've bought from China for my home workshop that uses non fused plugs. I'm not worried though as everything is plugged into fused, surge protected extension leads and those circuits in turn are connected to a dual RCD consumer unit with individual MCB's for each circuit. I know from practical experience, the slightest electrical fault will trip something, even something as trivial as an imperfect connection somewhere, let alone a short cicuit. The circuit made with the power supply in this video does not represent a typical real life one.
RCD will only protect you against leakage to earth. MCB will protect you against max current being exceeded. With one of these cables the resistance is so high that if you got a short between live and neutral you'd have around 12 ohms of resistance presented by the cable. That would be the same that you'd see from a 3kw heater. The MCB wouldn't trip because that is a normal load. None of your breakers would prevent the cable from melting. It would only be when the resistance of the short was below 6 ohms where your 32A MCB breaker would trip out. Fuses exist in UK plugs to protect the flex. Without them UK wiring is perfectly capable of delivering 32A into a 3-pin socket. These unfused plugs are truly deadly. Your sense of security is misplaced my friend. Please throw out your non-fused plugs. Cheers!!
Over 2.5 years after you posted this Video and they're still selling these LED strips with the same cable and unsafe PSU and all supposedly from a UK seller. Not sure if anyone has commented or if you noticed the Earth Pin is part insulated which means there's no earth connectivity when the plug is fully in the socket.
trip to Bunnings for a plug with a fuse, snip off non- fused on and install the right one the cable.. Don't know about uk but in Ireland when I was in school wiring plugs was part of basic science lessons. Was expecting a fire!
fabriglas in the early seventies in England it was on the science curriculum (old black/red/green and new blue/brown/yellow-green). Personally I'd chuck the whole thing, some of these leads have copper coated aluminium or steel wire, waste of a good plug :)
Even if that plug had a fuse in it would still not be legal here in the UK. The line and neutral pins are too close to the edge of the plug body, I think the minimum allowed is 9 mm, and the earth pin looks like it's partly sleeved,which it mustn''t be. I can't see if the line and neutral pins are sleeved, which they must be.
You're right +Stephen Furley - That minimum distance is to prevent your fingers curling round under the plug and touching the contacts when you're removing it - It's really a rather important safety feature. The line and neutral pins on the plug were sleeved, but so too was the earth pin, which again is incorrect. Happy Holidays. Cheers!!
Cool video and such dodgy leads are still on sale in 2018. BTW, U.K. homes have Ring Circuits and the National Grid has Ring Mains. At college we were always told off for using the wrong terminology. All genuine U.K. plugs are rated at 13amps and one needs to read the data from the cable sheath to calculate it's current rating e.g. 0.75mm flex is typically 6amps assuming it is really copper and the makers are not lying. Fake U.K. plug fuses also exist which cannot clear high fault currents and may not even have the correct size wire so beware of these also.
House fires, which kill people, are not caused by short circuits which rapidly trip breakers. They are caused by insulation failure due to chafing, rodents, age etc, which brings live and neutral wires into close proximity. This then draws an arc and takes a current which can be of any value up to the breaker rating. So if there is no fuse in the plug there can be a continuous current which is greater than the rating of the cable but less than the breaker rating resulting in it overheating and catching fire. This is the real advantage of having a fuse in the plug, it allows you to have a fuse which matches the rating of the flex to the appliance. This is not really anything to do with the use of ring mains, it applies equally to the 16A or 20A radial circuits used elsewhere in the world. Even that rubbish aluminium cored cable in this video would have been ok if it had a 3A fuse in the plug. The only problem with fused plugs is that it's difficult to get people to actually fit the correct size of fuse, appliances especially those supplied from abroad often come with a default 13A fuse regardless of the size of the flex.
2.5 ohms! So about 1.25 ohms per metre of wire = 1250 ohms/km. Even thin 7/0.2 copper wire is 88 ohms/km. One 0.2 mm diameter strand of the 7-strand 7/0.2 wire = 88x7 = 620 ohms/km. So their effective diameter of copper wire is 0.2 mm x (620/1250) = 0.1 mm, or 100 microns diameter / 25.4 = 0.0039 inches diameter (of copper). The I2R losses are impressively dangerous!
Yes, buy what about circuit breakers? Fused plugs are a legacy of the days before circuit beakers and I am sure that to meet insurance requirements, old houses must be re-wired using circuit breakers.
+Louisoft01 that's crazy. 32amp at 240v for domestic outlets, that's enough for a heat pump. surely such items don't share a circuit with the room sockets? that's plain barmy. even in my father's house in the uk built 70years ago, the heavy power items had independent circuits from the ring mains and i am certain that the ring mains were fused at much less than 32A. 32a for a ring main is crazy and unecessary.
+Alex Atkin that's over 3kw for a kettle? No. I use a 750w heater in a 15' by 12' room and it does fine. the circuit is 120v at 15a. I never pop breakers. in effect you are claiming that the uk is worse at fuel economy than the us!!!
Hi +984francis - I have a large number of 3KW rated devices here in the UK... All of my kettles, fan heaters and oil-filled radiators are capable of pulling up to 3KW. It's not really a question of fuel economy though - the greenhouse and shed are normally unheated, and more watts into the heater means that they heat up faster when I start using them. Cheers!!
Would be interesting to plug that dodgy cable into 240V mains instead of 15V, either it would act as a fuse and melt a part of it very quickly or more likely trip the 32A house circuit breaker. I'd like to also test it using a 30A standard consumer unit wire fuse instead of circuit breaker as I think wire fuses are slower.
Hi +Nigel2AB - I've actually got another identical cable kicking around (though I did strip back some of the insulation to check the quality of the conductors (which aren't even made of copper)). With a short at the end of the cable, it has a resistance of 2.1ohms, so plugged directly into the mains, it would try and pull 114Amps of current and blow the fuse wire - However, we used the cable to power a a 2KW (8.3A) fan heater, then the 2.1 ohm resistance of the cable would cause a 17.43V voltage drop, and it would be emitting 144.7 watts of heat, which I'm pretty sure would melt the insulation nice and quickly... and then it would short circuit and make some truly impressive sparks :) That would be fun to see... I'll think about doing it one day. Cheers!!
+Jim Conner Yes that would be fun to watch! We make a big deal in the UK with fuses to suit the wiring, but it's only really the wiring that needs to suit the appliance current. Obviously the wire in your video is dangerous because someone could plug it into a kettle (or as you say a fan heater), the wire would slowly heat up and likely to cause a fire. But having no fuse isn't really a big deal because any over-current fault occurring in the appliance or lead is almost always going to be a short-circuit, which at 240V the wire would either blow itself apart or the main 30A fuse would blow before anything gave off enough heat to start a fire. I saw an example of this in 1970's houses (and older) in Italy which had no fuses at all, apart from the main 60A breaker. Little thin flexes supplying lights were used, as in any house in any country, but effectively un-fused. I found it amusing, any short-circuit and the wires would just go bang and act as a fuse. Of course it's 'safer' to use fuses to suit the wire thickness, but when you think about it there must be many 13A plugs in the UK wired to 3A flexes for lights, but with 13A fuses in the plugs instead of the correct 3A fuse.
So... This means if there was a short on the end of the cable that was drawing less power than the circuit breaker in the electrical power panel is rated for, and the power in the cable was too high for its gauge, there is the chance this cable can melt down, cause an internal short, and thus cause a fire. I would think there must be many tens of thousands of users with under rated power cables, and not having proper protection. Then in many homes there are probably dangerous appliances and dangerous light bulbs bought mostly on line that would not be approved. We have to be very careful.
Jerry G. Looks like the fire may not wait for the internal short. This cable, falsely labeled for 10A could be plugged between a perfectly working outlet and a perfectly working 7A load, cause a 15V power drop in the cable (which the load may survive because 240V minus 15V is plenty for a device that works in 220V countries too). The cable will melt itself and set fire to anything nearby.
This is why I never fit 32A circuit breakers on my distribution or fuse box, or some people like calling it a consumer unit, 32A even on a ring mains it is very unsafe, no one should use so many appliances that their combined load on a single ring mains exceeds 16A . It is a lot safer to go for 16A than a 32A breaker, since you can never trust someone plugging in an appliance that has a dodgy plug or wire, however, i will differ in my opinion regarding the lead not having any fuse unless it was for a kettle, for most switched mode power supplies that use diodes and rectifiers and capacitors, they have their own fuse built in the circuit, which would go first, so don't just discriminate against foreign goods if they don't always meet BS. You can melt any wire by passing high current through it over a period of time, even a British plug with a 13A can catch fire, I have come across loads where despite the plug being a BS where wires have been terminated lose, causing heat or burns, fuse holders lose causing fuses to heat and plug pins to tarnish sockets with heat marks. Most electricians will not agree with me, but if a car is capable of doing 200MPH, it does not mean that you should push it to its limit, 70MPH is the maximum speed limit in UK, a ring mains is capable of handling 32A, but that does not mean you should subject it to 32A, so I beg to differ and will not ever use a 32A BREAKER, in the last 25 years I have not had my breaker trip due to overloading.
My ground floor has the living room, kitchen, hallway and 2 bedrooms, how on Earth would I power all of that on 16A? Every time I had the microwave and kettle on at the same time someone's TV or stereo would turn off.
Fake stuff are everywhere. I was preparing for a trip to the UK and needed US-to-UK plug adapters. I went on Amazon and ordered a couple of different brands. I noticed one brand had a fuse whereas the other brand did not have a fuse. I did a little more investigation of the fused travel plug and learned that it was a requirement specially when using US devices in the UK. A little more searching on Amazon showed that many such plug adapters are not in compliance with BS8546 nor have a BS1362 type fuse installed. Travelers using unfused type adapter plugs are putting themselves at great risk should their device(s) develops an internal short circuit. Would hate to see the device external cable go up in flames.
Aaaah, I wanted that plug. I would have got that out in the garden and *RIPPED IT RIIIIIIIIGHT UP* on 32A as a minimum! :D I have a setup which can pump a good 40A for 5 mins or so, and that cord WOULD NOT have survived for the first minute. *_I WANT FLAAAAAMES!_* Probably, the reason why that cable got as hot as it did, is because of a lower-than-needed cross-sectional area of wiring, OR it was copper-clad aluminium in there and not solid copper. Worse still.... copper clad STEEL. It's shame that you didn't test the resistance of each conductor before giving it a caning out in the garden..... we would have found out so much more as to what is going on inside the cable without having to cut it open. I have seen other similar vids on fake plugs like this and resistance measurements have been into the whole ohms. A cord that short would probably read less than 0.1 ohms, but that fake one? It wouldn't have surprised me if each conductor read differently, and if there wasn't an earth wire at all. There have been cases of these fake plugs having 3-core flex, but the earth conductor was never connected up inside the moulded plug! This means very little to no quality controls at the factory..... just bang-out thousands of them at rock-bottom prices. They probably change hands in their hundreds many times over before an end-user gets ahold of them.... that way, if one goes up in flames or someone gets buzzed, the manufacturer of them cannot be traced. The main thing though.... at least you identified it as a fake plug AND then busted it. That way, no one can be injured or killed by it. Thanxx for showing, -BoomBoxDeluxe. _8th May 2016, 20.20_
Hi +BoomBoxDeluxe - Nice to have you over here on my channel... I've watched a whole bunch of your videos in the past (hence the reason I have my own variac now). I actually have a second one of these cables which I've already cut open... I can tell you that it is definitely CCA conductors inside it and the resistance of the cables is around 1.5 ohms per meter ( It was 3.1 Ohms from live to neutral connections in the UK plug when I had the IEC end sorted out). Both live and neutral conductors are the same. The combined diameter of the wire strands in each conductor is around 0.3mm... I've seen significantly more substancial wiring in a pair of headphones. When I was testing out the conductors to work out if they were CCA or CC-steel I put a lighter flame to one of the strands and saw it burst into a shower of sparks in a most satisfying manner... It was a very thermite-like reaction... I know you can make a more reactive thermite compound from aluminium poweder mixed with copper-oxide, and it struck me that these wire strands may be at pretty much the perfect ratio for them to act as thermite... I'm planning on having a play around with these wire strands some more sooner or later to see if I can get a more spectacular failure... When the copper outer layer gets red-hot in air, it will oxidise, helping it to feed the reaction... If I had more than one of these cables remaining, I'd have loved to send one to you for you to destroy... but sadly I've only got one left now, and I want to play with that one myself. All the best... Keep up the good work on your videos. Cheers!! P.S. Sorry for taking such a long time to reply... I've been away from the keyboard a lot for the past couple of weeks.
Are you forgetting every house has a breaker box? The circuit breaket would trip far before something would start fire? Or am i missing the point of the video?
The circuit breaker will trip out at 16A or 32A current depending on the breaker, whereas this cable will catch fire at 5A current. The breaker wouldn't trip as the current is not high enough. Cheers!!
Have seen plugs which are the right size and are fused (though the fuse was rubbish and practically fell apart) and which carry something resembling a BS kitemark but which had shrouded earth pins and which failed a PAT test due to no earth connection. It's even harder for the layman to spot dodgy products unfortunately.
Very informative. But it sounds like the UK needs to update their wiring standards. That's just a dangerous way to do it, especially since you guys run 220v on a normal wall socket instead of 115v like in the USA.
Had it been fused it would not have made any difference even a 3a fuse may not blow at 3a, they require significant overload. That cable is more than likely not copper but some crappy plated aluminium. The insulation liquidity is disturbing. The other issue is sleeving on earth pin. Many trailing sockets have the earth contact close to the insertion point meaning once pushed in you're probably not earthed.
At least when you get one of these shitty leads you've got some free low voltage wire. How much current do you think that would handle at say 12V? Edit: Wait, I've just noticed it's only at 15V!
A fuse in the plug doesn't make sense for me, there is a fuse anyway in nearly all appliances, so you end up with two fuses, or more if you use extensions and power strips. Also you really get more protection for faults that draw more current than the cable rating but not so high to trip the circuit breaker, so not dead shorts, and these kind of shorts are very rare. Also for me it doesn't make sense that in the UK you have all that current in every plug, what you use them for ? You maybe need that current for big appliances, but why have all the plug rated for 32A ? It's a waste of wire, most of the appliances will not draw more than 10A, where I live I can't even draw more than 16A from the grid and for me it's fine, having 32A in a single plug is insane for me.
At each point you are protecting the cable beyond the fuse, so the 32A fuse protects the 32A ring, a 13A fuse may protect the cable and power strip and a 5A fuse may protect the cable to a laptop power supply. Hopefully, the laptop power supply will then have an internal fuse to protect the cable that goes to the laptop, which will have its own internal fuse. At no point in this design can a cable be overloaded as a fuse should blow first. As shown in the video an overloaded cable is a risk (smoke, heat, damage and maybe even electrocution) so low-cost fuses have a lot of possible value.
I have learned that 99% or more of Chinese products are incorrectly rated. Most of the time you must take the stated rating and divide by 4 to get an actual maximum usage rating. Also note that the earth pin on the Chinese plug has an insulation coating on it...it should not have any at all.
Setup up properly, these plugs are perfectly legit and safe to use. They often come on lighting equipment as the manufacturer assumes you will mount them plugged in an inaccessible place - where it’s awkward to change the fuse- and fed from a fused spur. For example, if you were to setup an led strip under a kitchen wall cabinet, you might conceivably plug it into a socket hidden on top of the cabinets but power the whole thing from one fused wall mounted switch. Therefor if the fuse blows you don’t need fanny about on a ladder. The same would be true for disco lights which often come with these. Obviously the best way to do it would be to cut the plug off and wire it straight into a fused switch, but there is convenience factor with not doing that, especially in the context of (stage) lighting. The problem is that a lot of these cheapo Chinese systems don’t come with any proper warning or instructions.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment, but I would beg to differ on the point you're making that these plugs can ever be legit and safe to use.. The fact that the plug has '10A MAX' embossed onto it when it is clearly not capable of handling that current means that it is a dangerous knock-off. The plug fits into sockets which are designed to handle 32A max on ring-final circuits, and therefore it really should be fused. We have BS456 unfused 5A round-pin plugs which are specifically designed for lighting circuits, and often used in theatre lighting, where they are attached to a fused system upstream. The BS1362 standard for these 13A square-pin main plugs states that the cable should be fused to protect that cable itself, and the device attached to the cable should be internally fused if necessary. It is specifically because the UK regulations prohibit sale of devices without a fitted plug (because many consumers weren't able to wire up the plugs themselves) that we see this kind of dangerous knock-off. I'm sorry, but there really is no way that this cable can ever be deemed safe under any circumstances. I hope this doesn't come across as me having a go at you or anything like that, but as you can probably guess from the content of the video, I'm pretty horrified that cables like this get sold in the first place. Thanks again for taking the time watch my video and also to write a well thought out comment. Cheers!!
+Tzimnewman3 - I was running from an isolated DC supply, so there was no reference for earth.... but thinking about it now.... if I'd hooked the negative terminal of the DC supply to both the neutral and earth pins, it would have been a more accurate failure scenario, as it would have allowed for the cable to short between live-and-earth as well as live-and-neutral after the insulation all melted.... Didn't think of that at the time. Will try to remember to do it next time. Cheers!!
Something to hearten you..... I tracked down at least one of the Chinese factories/major distributors - "Shenzhen Le Tao Xing Technology Company Ltd" and had a chat with them about the lack of safety of their product. They first responded with "if you don't like them, don't buy them" and then when I emphasised that my concern was safety, "We don't understand why you are complaining, we have sold thousands of these into the UK with no problem" Armed with _that_ admission and a couple of the offending plugs, I've been escalating through my local Trading Standards through to National Trading standards and now they're talking to Chinese authorities with an eye to getting enforcement done in China (remember, everything is licensed there - no license == no exports) and getting production of the dangerous plugs stopped along with production dies destroyed. This is looking more and more feasible - the USA has been doing the same thing with their CPSC having established offices in Shenzhen and getting good results - they're actively inviting other country regulators to join them in the effort to get unsafe products eliminated from chinese exports. Here's hoping it plays out. Product safety is in everyone's interest.
Thanks old fruit good to see someone spreading common sense which these days is in short supply. The P. C. Brigade being lazy and useless call anything thorough or done with care and attention :-::obsessive compulsive disorder. No skill or attention to detail or a these days their attention span is virtually zero. Good luck you will need it :-: you can’t educate PORK !!!!!
Looking at the adverts below your video there, I can see a 'round-pin' plug. Who still makes or even uses them nowadays? I dare say they'll be properly made with fuse-holders, unlike any of the older ones I've seen, or the 2-pin round-pin ones. It's good to point out that not all is what it seems and getting cabling guage right is paramount for safety on any electrical device. It can't be said enough. I still had a 10amp fuse somewhere...
Unofficial UK plugs and sockets are used in hospitals, typically to stop people from trying to fill up the socket for their own purposes, usefull if you are greedy and don't want to hand out electricity.
@@ss_super_steve I can well imagine, especially with the bedside contraptions for the patient to use for pay-per-everything; tv, phone connections and radio and the like. I've heard of these but never seen one in the hospitals, thankfully. That and the expansion of our own Hand-Held devices and their chargers. The Hospital trusts must be packing it in there! Cynical people, some would say Pragmatists but if it happened to them...?
Is it a Copper wire or maybe it is stainless steel coated with Copper and that is why you can not get the 30Amp? And that is why it got so hot with 5A. A .75mm copper should be fine with 10Amps. Stainless wire would not
Hi dooronron69 - The power supply I was using is current limited (65.9Amp max) and short circuit protected, so i knew that it wasn't going to pop any fuses. Cheers!!
+Jim Conner thanks, I got one of those leads with a battery charger that charged 18650's on ebay, I didn't use it because it had no fuse, glad I didn't now,
Hi David - They're not just from the 1960s... Both plugs and sockets for 5A and 15A round-pin plugs are still easily available today, and still covered by all the wiring regulations. They're not unsafe as long as they've been wired up correctly in the house, with each socket having it's own 15A fuse back at the fuse box. The power cord from the plug to the device should also have the same 15A rating, but as the plugs are rewireable people can easily connect more lightweight cable (i.e. 3A cabling to a table lamp) which isn't capable of handling the load correctly and create a potentially dangerous situation. Because of this, I'd recommend getting them updated to the square-pin types. Also if your house has those sockets dotted around, then some of the wiring probably pre-dates the 1947 change in the regulations - If so, then the wiring would be around 70 years old - I believe that the PVC insulation around the wires can become brittle and crack over that kind of time span, so I reckon it's worth at least getting it checked over to make sure it's all still OK. Hope that helps. Cheers!!
@@ThingsWhichArentWork cables that old may have rubber insulation which has probably now gone brittle and prone to cracking off, like a few in our house
You should ge one of these ultra-chinese versions of that cable which Dave once ranted over. With something like a tenth of the wire diameter that would be needed to carry the current. It would act as both current limiter and fuse on its own! :D
The shit plug and cable I have came supplied with my new dslr camera kit from a UK company and it was not cheap, when I challenged the supplier the idiot behind the counter told me I didn't know what I was talking about....as it was ok to have non fused plugs with low power items, I Really Dispair
+Rob Harrison The point of the fuse in the plug is to protect the cabling from the plug to the device. As you correctly say, wall-wart style plugs which do not have any kind of cable to protect are allowed to rely on the protection built directly into them. Cheers!!
Hi RODALCO2007 - I'm a great fan of your videos, so it's really nice to have you stop by over here to watch one of mine. Hope all is good with you. Keep zapping those wasps. Cheers!!
thank you for explaining UK plugs and WHY they are wired that way. being from the US ive always known plugs to have individual circuits, with individual fuses and i had seen other videos and never knew they why .. so thank you for answering a question ive had for years!
it was originally to make wiring simpler (also possibly to save copper, but that may be apocryphal) during the rebuilding after ww2... and the ring circuit was so successful it's still being installed today.
To be honest though, I install as many 20 amp radials these days as ring mains* because consumer units (breaker panels) are available in larger sizes now.
*yes I know it's now known as a 'ring final circuit' but it used to be called a ring main in older versions of the regs ;)
Plugs with partially sleeved earth pins are guaranteed to be absolutely always counterfeit, and are not allowed to be sold, even though they're for non-earthed applications.
Absolutely correct.
Also any UK or Shuko (or any other kind) power pluigs with CE markings - UK law specifically outlaws CE markings on BS1363 plugs and the CE itself bans CE markings on european plugs as they are regulated by _national_ (not international) standards.
You'll sometimes see unsleeved live/neutral pins on older plugs. These are still legal (grandfathered in) on existing flexes, but not legally allowed to be reused, even if being refitted to the same flex.
Perfectly legal on double insulated equipment BUT if they are on an unplugable lead then they MUST only have a two pin connector on the other end (like a figure 8 connector) that is impossible to plug into any sort of earthed 3 pin connector.
To clarify that for anyone - plastic earth pins are ok on double insulated equipment or on (otherwise OK) figure-8 connector cables.
Partially sleeved metal earth pins are _never_ OK, even under such circumstances.
Correct, because partially sleeved earth pins will only make contact whilst you are inserting it into the socket, once the plug is pushed fully into the socket the earthing is broken because the contact inside the socket is in contact with the plastic sleeve, not the metal part of the pin.
always nice of counterfeiters when they leave such a (relatively) obvious tell that their cable is worthless crap. i just wish that more people were able to spot it-most folk seem to assume that anything you can plug into the mains must be safe to do so, but this is tragically not always the case.
As a Canadian whos blown many fuses in older apartments and homes and tripped circuit breakers, I wish we had individually fused recepticles or plugs, that way if I short something I'm working on, it'll just blow its own fuse rather then knock out half the house blowing a fuse or tripping a breaker.
It can be done, and I believe it is legal to make an individually-fused US-style plug. Not tried to though.
Ellenor Malik
Well I mean, most electronics have internal fuses, but it'd be nice if the plug had its own fuse. But aside from internal fuses, its not mandetory (nor have i seen it in Canada) that plugs or sockets have fuses.
We don't need fuses in our plugs , if it's a problem just use a power bar with a breaker in it usually rated a bit lower than the wall outlet, the idea of a 32 amp cable @ 240 volts a few millimeters below the surface of the wall is so incredibly dangerous , imagine driving a nail or screw into it as you try to hang something on the wall you would die instantly. Here in North America you would need to drive a long nail or screw into it the closest it is to the finished surface of the wall is about 1.75" it would instantly trip the breaker and you are still alive to hire an electrician to replace the damaged cable.
It really made me nervous when your rabbit was sniffing around the cable and when you were picking up the cable.
+Stephen Huxtable At short circuit voltages? I don't think there'd be much of a problem. Maybe some sparks at worst.
That's assuming he had the voltage limit set fairly low on the power supply. You can see the display reading 15.2, and I'm *assuming* that was the limit and not the actual voltage.
Hi +Alex C - No animals were hurt during the filming of this video :-) - The 15.2V was the actual voltage at the output terminals of the power supply, which is a totally safe voltage to be playing around with. There was no risk whatsoever of electrocution when I did this - the only real risks were from the molten plastic (which could have stuck to their fur), or from the plastic fumes as it burned off (which is why I filmed this outdoors in the first place). Hope you're having a good weekend. Cheers!!
Jim Conner
I know that already - read the comment I was replying to.
I'm surprised that was the actual voltage. That would mean the cable had a resistance of about 3 ohms, which seems a bit high unless it's got quite thin wires.
Same, I kind of felt so worried for the bunny wabbit
Stephen Huxtable, there is only 15 volts on it....
One addition, a bit late, but worth making the point... when throwing away a plug like this, hit it with a hammer, twist the pins off with pliers, or something similar, so some kid can't pick it up and plug it in. Same applies to compliant moulded plugs that have to be cut off to make a wired connection :)
but then how we gonna kill the stupid people?
I save them to catch out lazy dishonest PAT testing companies., which I have done several times, which is quite worrying when companies are paying them lots of money to supposedly keep them safe.
How?
Dont tell him - hes a PAT tester
It's a myth that the fuse in the plug is only because the UK uses ring mains (and then not all the time). Even if a circuit was fused for 13 amps, the thin cables for appliances like table lamps or those power adapters can't. A damaged cable can be overloaded and cause a fire. Hence a 3 amp fuse on a table lamp will be safer, ring main or not. In addition, 13 amp sockets can be used on high powered radial circuits. Typically cooker circuits rated at 32A or 40A were often installed with a 13 amp socket on the switch plate in kitchens.
The fused plug is simply a good idea as it can be tailored to the appliance and the flexible cord. That can't be done with general purpose sockets. Yes, a ring main makes it more important, but it applies equally to any circuit which has a higher current rating than a flexible cord that might be plugged into it.
nb. the lack of a fuse isn't the only reason those plugs don't comply with UK standards.
I've actually seen plugs like this on kit in a hospital. Even worse, one piece of equipment at church has a plug like this but with no insulation on the pins (legal requirement since 1984, and NOT permitted on the earth pin which your example has). All of these plugs are illegally small in body too. The wire in many is pretty awful as well.
Hi +Phil Reynolds - I'm very surprised that these plugs would show up in hospitals as they normally have lots of regulation on medical-grade electronics. These plugs are wrong in so many ways, and having taken a closer look at the conductors, I'm pretty sure they're not actually copper at all... the metal looks and behaves more like some kind of bronze (which is an alloy of copper and tin)... I suspect these conductors are made of an alloy of copper and whatever leftover bits of scrap metal they could melt in to bulk up the quantities. Cheers!!
+Jim Conner China is currently pumping something they call CCA. It's "cuprum covered aluminium", and it is in fact aluminium centre with a copper vapour plating. It is a bit better than just aluminium wires as it doesn't have all the negative mechanical properties, but it is still a piece of c...
The whole problem is that people look at value and not at the quality. And 2x4mm^2 sounds better than 2x2,5mm^2, even tho the second one is actually better...
Hi +mrkv4k - It looks and sounds like CCA is almost certainly what these wires are made from. They've got a resistance of about 1 ohm per metre which is pretty awful... I wouldn't even wire up a doorbell with wire that bad. Thanks for taking the time to comment - sorry it took me so long to reply. Cheers!!
At 1 ohm per metre they'd fail PAT testing. Whatever they are, the best place for them is the bin - after being chopped into small segments.
Good demonstration! With a total resistance of about 3 ohms for that short cable the manufacturer obviously wasn't wasting money on much copper. Worth pointing out that the UK system allows for fusing at just 1A which, with the right plug & fuse would make even thin rubbish cable like that reasonably safe. Not something one can say for the Schuko or US style systems.
In fact, do not throw the wire away, report it to your local trading standards with full details of where it was purchased from. They won't be able to get your money back but hopefully they can stop more of them coming into the country and being sold. If you don't know who or where your local trading standards is they can be found through your local council.
Sometimes I tend to forget that most of the safety precautions in place are there for a reason. It's easy to get complacent and think nothing can go wrong.
FesterWerks 99.9% of the time you can get away with flouting the regulations - the seller of these dodgy plugs will get away with it this time because I threw them in the bin rather than plugging them in... but not everyone out there has a background in electronics and most folks won't even spot the difference between the plugs. I can easily imagine the situation where my parents or my kids grab any old cable as long as it fits in the socket. Hope you're well. Cheers!!
you got 5 amps at 15 volts dc through it, thats 75 watts, Now do the same test at 240 volts ac....... (You wil trip a 20 amp breaker before the wire even gets warm)
the test is not demonstrating what happens when a dead short occurs... its simulating a high load over time... its not the voltage that makes the wire get warm its the current... the current going threw the wire was well within the "rating" of 10 amps.... so if u plugged a gaming computer into this wire... 15 minites into playing your game.. the carpet behind your desk would have melted plastic on it and very possibly a bare 240V live wire... at least for this type of plug
This test demonstrates an overloaded cable. If that cable was used on a 10 Amp heater the 20 Amp breaker would not trip during the overload. It will only trip when the Active and Neutral conductors short out within the cable, and that does not always happen before the PVC catches fire.
'just throw it in the bin' - great advice. I like to make short 'kettle' cables by rescuing the power cable with plug from old microwave ovens and putting a cheap screw-terminal 'kettle' connector on the end. The cable is a nice heavy and robust gauge and these stay cool at 10A.
Hi Jim, Power has nothing to do with the cable dimensioning just current.
Your power supply can only deliver 15V and since your current limit was set much higher the actual 6A current has to do with the cable resistance.
So 15V / 6A = 2.5ohm. Do not know the cable length but I will estimate around 1.2m so for a complete circuit that is 2.4m
It means that the copper conductor inside has a resistance of around 1ohm per meter.
That means that the copper conductor inside is at best 0.02mm2 (AWG34) and that is absolutely unacceptable even for a digital signal cable.
Can you cut the insulation to see the copper. I'm extremely curios but that seems to be the case based on your test.
The copper wire in that cable is actually thiner than what you find in a 5A fuse the only thing helping that copper wire not breaking was the molten plastic insulation that helped with the cooling of the copper.
Hi ***** - With hindsight, I should probably have used a different power supply to test this out with. I used that supply because it can deliver >32Amps of current which is what our ring mains are rated at in the UK. I was expecting that cable to be able to handle at least it's rated 10amps of current, but that wasn't the case. I just put the remaining non-melted cable across my multimeter just now and it seems that we're looking at a resistance of around 1.3 ohms per metre which would indicate somewhere around 36AWG wire being used internally which is (so the inernet tells me) around 0.127mm diameter.... so... I've just cut the cable open, stripped one of the wires inside it and measured it with my calipers.. and yep... they tell me 0.13mm for the conductor. I've seen better wire than this used for hooking up doorbells. According to a chart I just found, 36AWG is good for around 0.21Amps for chassis wiring, or 35mA for power transmission (i.e. for this cable). Given that the plug on the end of the wire has 10Amps moulded into the plastic, this is just a lethal combination. Hope all is going well with the BMS v2 and your impressive LCD driver code. Cheers!!
Jim Conner Hi Jim, Yes it seems I was a bit optimistic with AWG34 :) still I never seen anything like that before not even on a cheap USB cable.
Yes the SBMS is progressing the HW design is done just ordered the parts for beta and the PCB's then I can continue with software. Is a bit more work than I anticipated but this happens all the time :)
Heh.. more work than expected... yeah.. tell me about it :) - I'm a great fan of telling colleagues that 'the difficult bits are easy and the easy bits are difficult'... The horrendously complicated technical wizzardry aspect always seems daunting when you're planning a project and don't know quite how to achieve it... whereas the easy bits you've done before seem like they're a simple chore that'll take you no time.... And then when you actually get stuck into a project, you solve the technical wizzardry in no time, but the easy chores take forever and turn out to be far more complicated than you ever anticipated - I'm convinced that this is the reason why so many IT projects go drastically overbudget. Cheers!!
Jim Conner :) Yes all the small simple things add up to much more than you expect. That is why is a good thing to include large margins in the time-line.
I think those that build the cable you tested in this video had no budget problems :)
For HW is normally quite easy to get a good budget estimations there are just small things that can affect that like the exchange rate in my case :) CAD drop quite a bit since I made the budget so components cost increased accordingly.
But the SW part that is alway hard to estimate is better to leave large margins and if you have time you can implement some new futures or test it more.
People got lazy and prefer to send a device as is then use the customer for testing and provide firmware updates :)
***** That is a good point! While I think it won't be that bad AWG34 it maybe that the cable has just something like AWG24 (0.2mm²). Maybe Jim can cut open the not burned part of it and actually measure the diameter of the copper cores inside. But maybe that piece of crap is already in it's home, the bin :)
We spent about NZ$5000 a few years ago having our house rewired as the old wire sheathing was disintegrating, (a common problem for late 50's early 60's houses here in NZ due to a faulty manufacturing process unknown at the time.) Our real old fuse box was replaced by up to date RCD circuit breakers. This means you don't need separate RCD units when working outside or in slightly damps areas. Luckily the electrician and his apprentice didn't have to cut any wall boards. Our house is from the mid 50's so has noggins/dwangs about every 600mm between the studs, so wires couldn't simply be dropped down. We had new hot points put in around the place which meant running the wires from under the house. I think the average number of double outlets per room is about four, with quad outlets in a number of rooms too. The electric range is 30amp and on it's own circuit. Oh and in our converted triple garage (to which runs a 20amp cable underground from the house and has it's own circuit breaker) we've 5 doubles and a quad plus an 8 plug multi box, with the attached tool shed having 10 doubles, one of which is a 13amp. And there's 2 outside hotpoints too. All hot points are 10amp bar 1. We have a lot of electrical appliances, tools and A/V things.
There is a big difference between using a cable to conduct current towards a load and using the cable as a load itself. I’m guessing the wire gauge of the plug was around 17awg(1mm2) @ 1 meter. If you were to pass 240vac through this cable into a 10amp load you would see around 0.33vac drop. This would result in a power loss of 3.3watts which the cable would dissipate itself as heat. In your case the wire has to dissipate approximately 95watts which is going to make a lot of heat and obviously melt the cable. I would really like to see you revisit this topic with a more sound testing method.
Hi - glad I saw your video. I got one of these exact dodgy plugs with a Hard Drive dock that I bought from eBay. The dock itself has a dodgy on/off switch on it. I think I’m now going to throw the whole thing in the bin.
The other lethal thing about the plug is that the metal on the Earth connector is not the full length of the pin. In most power sockets, the spring connectors make contact over a small area, and a partially-inserted plug without a completely metal Earth pin might not be connected to Earth whilst still being connected to the Live terminal. If ever you see a plug with half of the Earth pin being plastic, then you really need to destroy it and replace it. If they've cheated-out on the plug, then I automatically syspect the whole cable, and maybe the associated equipment too.
I learnt that a lot of these cables in conjunction with these plugs may read something such as "0.5mm" on the side, when in reality, if you chop it open, you will find a thick insulation around a mere three or five strands of copper, which come think of it could cause the reactions seen in this video.
Considering the sheer resistance offered by the illegal cable, I suspect that it would still have gone up in smoke if it had been fitted with a fused plug at manufacture.
If anything, the cable AND the plug are rubbish.
It would be interesting if you could compare this with a legal power cable, tested the same way as you did the first one.
Hi +CNCmachiningisfun - That cable measured as 2.1 Ohms per metre... At it's 10A rated load, it'd have a 21V voltage drop, and hence a 210Watt heat output from the wire - It certainly won't take long to melt the plastic like that. A 2-amp load would probably be just-about OK on that cable (4.2 watts of heat dissipated across a metre isn't too bad). I like your idea of testing a legal cable... I might try that at the weekend. Cheers!!
Jim Conner
Thanks for the reply. Those cable performance stats are really quite scary, as they describe what you might call a 'linear heater', as opposed to a power cable.
I look forward to any updates on your findings here.
Keep up the good work.
I think it was a little oversimplification saying in many countries each socket has its own line. In the U.S. most lines will be divided into rooms, so a bedroom or the bathroom will have its own line. The exception would be the kitchen where some outlets do have their own dedicated circuits, such as the fridge and the counter outlets.
I had a cable like that with the clover shaped unfused plug. I DID use it, but I used it by plugging it into a fused double-plug with a 2Amp fuse. I didn't get any overheating problem with it, but another potentially lethal fault. The insulation wore through on it an exposed the live wire. I immediately removed it from the supply, and threw it straight into the bin.
It's not just the no fuse and fire risk of these cables, it's also the low quality of the insulation and risk of a shock.
Thanks +Kacey Anders - Yes - you're right - I've heard from others that the conductors don't alway run through the centre of the plastic insulation and sometimes are frighteningly close to being exposed.... To make matters worse, I don't think the conductors are actually made of copper either.... They seem to be some kind of alloy of copper+other... They're not bright and shiny like copper, and they don't bend the same way as normal copper wire does. There's no better place for these cables than straight in the bin. Happy Christmas!! Cheers!!
Great Video, Jim, which clearly explains by demonstrating what can happen to the cables.
Everybody (specifically those not in the know) Overloading electricity cables causes fires, major fires. DO NOT under *any* circumstances defeat the fuse cartridge or fuse wire by using aluminium foil, bolts, off cuts from 6" nails and the like - doing so may cost you and / or the people you love their lives in the most horrendous way imaginable
@electrodacus though you are right in that the current dictates the area needed of the wires, power dissipation is I x I x R (I squared x R). As he had put a short across the IEC socket, the load was in fact the cables own resistance, so the power being delivered was being dissipated in the wires, hence they got hot! Though thicker wires have less resistance (assuming the same conductor material), thicker wires also mean more area for the heat to disperse - less heat density - so the heat doesn't reach such a high temp.
For the record the electric meter tails in one house I visited with an electric oven, two hobs, washing machine runnng, and electric kettle on were noticeably hot, they were running at ~34C. Though I was concerned, I'm told they're rated at 40C. I seriously advised them have them replaced with the next size up!
Big Clive would have done it better, he'd have found a way to stick the full 32A through it.
Rodalco2007 would have done it even better than Big Clive. He'd have stuffed a couple of hundred amps through it. More if he thought there were any wasps in it.
So true... so true :-)
I would have liked to see what Photonicinduction would have done with it, maybe a couple thousand amps or so.
Or even better - send the thing to Photonicinduction. He'll have made sure that the cable got a good grilling!
I had one of those - looked identical from the to, but the pins weren't even shrouded! Fingers touched both live and neutral unless you were really careful when removing. Always turned off before unplugging with that one! Now in bin.
+dopiaza2006 I hope you cut the cord into two or three pieces first; I always do that with dangerous or worn out power leads or extension cords so nobody can dig it out or discover it and possibly attempt to use it (I would feel responsible if they did and were injured or heaven forbid, killed).
What this does go to prove is the absence of the fuse in the plug is the least of the worries. A standard 5A cartridge fuse will take forever to blow at even 6A, if it ever does. What's the real problem is the tiny gauge of the wire being used. Making a reasonable guess at the length of that cable, and with a resistance of around 3 ohms, the cross-sectional area can't be more than 0.01 sq mm, which is insanely low. The smallest gauge flexi cable commonly used on UK system is about 0.5 sq mm. Such cable would need a fuse of perhaps 250ma of or so.
It should be noted that neither do other countries have one wire for each socket. The sockets are chained with one typically 10 A breaker though there is no ring.
Interesting setup - both the proper and demo of improper UK wiring. I've been into the breaker box of several houses here in the US and I guess we do sort of have a "ring mains" setup. Each circuit does have more than one plug on it. There is a breaker though in the distribution box and a dead short like you demo'd would simply trip the breaker and that circuit would become inert.
It makes me wonder how much negotiation goes into international projects like ISS or shipping/aircraft where they much be able to plug in to devices/mains/ or have devices plug into them that were made in many different places.
I would say none at all, there are no appliance compatibility issues with ring mains.
Thanks for the info Jim :) it is neat to find out how the UK houses are wired different form here in the US.
Cheers mate I had a few of them on eBay stuff I brought, got proper UK cables now,
Thanks Kurt - I'm very glad to hear that - It really makes me happy to know that me making this video has done some good for the world. Cheers!!
In addition to the video:
In modern houses in the UK the MCBs are B-type, which means: The short-circuit trip of the MCB is tripping only immediatly if the current raises up between the three and five times of the nominal current. For safety reasons it should be calculated with the higher value, in the case of a B32 A: 160 A. In Germany we're using B16 A for the sockets, and in regular three B16 for the kitchen stove (three-phase current).
And I think this cable does not have copper conductors. I think they are actually made of aluminium. That's the only explanation why this cable heated up so much at this low current.
The manufacturer should be strangled with this cable, it's a deathtrap!
Did not know this UK detail. Modern houses have fuseboxes with fuses for every thing, like in a car.
Usually electronics have built in fuses so why an extra fuse in the plug. A lot of cables are ratet below fuse amperage, 2A Europlug, but during a short circuit, they will blow the fuse as they can widthstand much more for a short time.
I wonderd if AC amps generate more heat than DC even if it's the RMS value.
it protects the cable overheating, you may have a partial short, not total, taking say, 6 amp, on a 3 amp cable, it will eventually overheat and may catch fire, but not blow the fuse or trip the breaker in the fusebox/consumer unit..
States we have 15 amp branches per room (new code is arc fault protected). 20 amp bathroom & outdoor socket branch all on the same branch with gfci protection. 30 amp kitchen branch with a separate supply for dishwasher, garbage disposal (a in sink shredder), refrigerator and oven. Amp rating for each are various but mostly 20 & 30amp. Total average supply amp is 200 with 2phase 230vac. Our power boxes are pretty standard squareD breakers.
Its funny that the plug you tested was 10 amp. I am willing to bet the plug was a usa plug modified with a simulated uk plug. Most wired appliances use a 10amp 115vac cord. I am willing to be that if you lowered your supply voltage to 115 it would take the full 10 amps. Counterfeiters rarely mark things with science.. they just copy and paste whatever they find first.
I wouldn't throw that away without completely destroying the possibility it could be used again.
In Canada, we have done away from archaic obsolete fuses and use square D breakers that can be reset multiple times and our wiring is different and we don't use switches on the outlets a fuse is a one time use only breakers are multi-use
Well I have an RCD so it will detect the sine wave being weird and turn the power off, also an MCB will trip because it will take more than 30amp (for a few ms) which will also trip it.
I've always wondered, why not put the fuse in the wall socket instead of the plug? Seems like you would need less fuses overall, and you still get overcurrent protection. Basically i'm thinking of a GFI socket (only not as touchy of course)
Hi +Gunhaver - I believe they do something similar to that in Australia, with each socket limited to 10A maximum output (GFIs in the breaker box), but they also ensure that all devices plugged into a socket are equipped with a cord capable of handling 10A current - The equipment at the other end of the power cord then has it's own internal fuse to protect it's own circuitry - It's a pretty good solution, but the down-side is that even if your device is only using 0.1A it must still have a 10A rated power cord.... The UK's fused-plug system was implemented as a measure to save on copper, so we can have power cords rated at only 3A which will use about 1/3rd of the copper. Cheers!!
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
We got a load of them with PSUs we bought for work.
I binned them all but not before chopping the plugs off so no one could fish them out of electrical waste and use them.
5 amps at 15 volts equals 3ohms for about 1 meter of cable (1.5 for Live and 1.5 for Neutral. Real 10 amp cable has a resistance of 18 MILLI ohms per meter. The amount of copper in it must have been tiny, if any
I remember when someone showed me how to place a 2 pin/6A Euro plug into a UK socket by placing something in the ground hole to release the shutters in the socket.
Seemed like a good way for a student on a budget not to get a proper fused adaptor, but I was told I then have a 32A mains fuse protecting a 6 A rated circuit.
Some overseas makers are notorious for shortcuts. That's how they get the price down.
gtgene I done that with my european nintendo 64. would never recommend doing it.
This video has a lot of comments about the UK electrical system. The big advantage of the ring main system is this: you can have as many 13A single and double socket outlets as you like (within reason) in a defined area (it can serve an area of no more than 100m2). All fed via a single fuse or MCB (miniature circuit breaker). If a fuse is used, it's rating is 30A. If a MCB is used, it's rating is 30A or 32A.
By having a fused plug, the mains sockets and outlets can all take the same physical plug. Unlike the previous UK electrical system, which had 2A, 5A, 10A and 15A outlets, with the two lower rating sockets having different sized plugs and sockets (known as the round pin plugs). The fuse allows proper fuse discrimination. So the fuse nearest the fault blows in the event of an large overload or short circuit. As stated in the video, the fuse in the plug protects the electrical flex.
Earth leakage or RCD devices do not trip out due to overloads or short circuits between the line (live) and the return (neutral) conductors, they only trip out if there is a different current flowing between the line (live) and the return (neutral) where they pass through the RCD. This occurs if electrical current is leaking to earth (ground).
Some more info here www.ratedpeople.com/c/advice/diy-guides/guides-electrics/guides-electrics-wiring/electrical-ring-main-wiring-diy-guide
Does the plug have the BSI 'kite' mark and the number of the relevant standard? It looks like a job for the Trading Standards department of your local authority.
Not wanting to nit pick, but you'd have had the same result with a 10A or 13A fuse and a 5A current, indeed even British Standard plugs get hot under a 13A load.
16A and 32A plugs aren't fused either, many of them are used for much lower current appliances than their breaker rating too, sometimes only a few hundred watts, with their water resistant(ish) design being the attractive feature.
There must still be thousands of toothbrush and shaver chargers plugged into shaver sockets on regular ring main or lighting circuits.
I don't find that the CRI of LED's renders the colour codes on resistors very well at all! Really need 1 water clear orange LED in the strip for every 8 or 10 cold white/warm white.
Ok, so I am trying to understand the functional difference between ring type and direct (Like we use in the USA). In the US the Circuit breaker is to protect the building wiring NOT the device or its wiring, and we don't have problems here. That being said, we use 120 VAC which would bring you wattage down by half.
Also, the old standard was three different plugs according to current (10 amp, 20 amp, 30 amps). Therefore, you couldn't plug an under rated cord into the wrong outlet. But that has all but dissapered...I don't know why but I would say because the cords are better designed?
I think we get complacent when it comes to cables. Some months ago i was getting a computer ready to reinstall software. Plan being to leave it alone whilst i did other things outside. About a minute after switching on the cable suddenly burst and sparks began to be emitted and burned like explosive fuse wire. Not sure if it blew the fuse, UK plug. I just switched it off and threw the cable away. Doesn't bare thinking what would have happened if it failed several minutes later. Cable was lying on the carpet.
To be honest I've never been able to grasp the technical advantage of ring mains. The way I see it, a 32 A ring mains wired with 2.5 mm2 T&E uses slightly MORE copper than two 16 A radials using the exact same T&E but minus the section that completes the ring. Same amount of power, slightly less copper used, maybe minimally higher voltage drop but no fuses necessary.
Just staying with BS 546 15 A but dropping the requirement for each socket to be on a dedicated circuit would have achieved essentially the same result in terms of available power, minus the need for plug fuses. And of course a new plug doing away with the sheer number of different BS 546 sizes could have been introduced using 15/16 A radial circuits too.
My only explanation is that historically someone was really in love with the concept of the ring mains and managed to convince everyone else.
+Ragnar8504 Surely the copper savings of ring mains increase the more sockets you have? Put four sockets in close proximity and you'll see what I mean.
i got given 2 of those plugs about a year ago (i think i still have them) dont use them because of the fact there is no fuse and as you said if something was to happen theres no fail safe, the fuse is suppose to be the first point of protection, if the fuse doesnt pick it up and blow then the next point is the RCD on your fuse board (had a soldering iron that went short circuit, didnt blow the fuse but did trip the RCD and yes it was using the right fuse, a 3 amp one)
You didn't say anything about the sleeved earth pin either (and sometimes fused plugs can come with illegal sleeved earth pins).
Hi Jim, thanks for an excellent demo. Were the conductors actually copper? I have heard that some of these specimens are using copper coated ferrous material. Also beware of the plugtops even if they contain a fuse, they too can be very much substandard in devious ways.Cheers.
Hi Hassan. I still have one of those two cables kicking around with the conductors exposed, so I've just given it a close look. The conductors look quite a lot like copper, but are a bit darker... they look rather like grubby copper. The wires don't move like copper though... They don't bend the same way... They seem to spring back from whatever position you move them to as if theve got some spring steel in them. I tried a very stron neodinium magnet on the conductors, but got no reaction, so definitely not ferrous. I'm really not sure what they'e made of now... but I'm sure it's not any kind of high quality copper. I've just done some quick googling on identifying metals and I'd say it looks and behaves most like bronze (an alloy of copper and tin). I suspect there's more than just tin and copper in the mix though. Cheers!!
I've got lots of electrical equipment I've bought from China for my home workshop that uses non fused plugs. I'm not worried though as everything is plugged into fused, surge protected extension leads and those circuits in turn are connected to a dual RCD consumer unit with individual MCB's for each circuit. I know from practical experience, the slightest electrical fault will trip something, even something as trivial as an imperfect connection somewhere, let alone a short cicuit. The circuit made with the power supply in this video does not represent a typical real life one.
RCD will only protect you against leakage to earth. MCB will protect you against max current being exceeded. With one of these cables the resistance is so high that if you got a short between live and neutral you'd have around 12 ohms of resistance presented by the cable. That would be the same that you'd see from a 3kw heater. The MCB wouldn't trip because that is a normal load. None of your breakers would prevent the cable from melting. It would only be when the resistance of the short was below 6 ohms where your 32A MCB breaker would trip out. Fuses exist in UK plugs to protect the flex. Without them UK wiring is perfectly capable of delivering 32A into a 3-pin socket. These unfused plugs are truly deadly. Your sense of security is misplaced my friend. Please throw out your non-fused plugs. Cheers!!
Over 2.5 years after you posted this Video and they're still selling these LED strips with the same cable and unsafe PSU and all supposedly from a UK seller. Not sure if anyone has commented or if you noticed the Earth Pin is part insulated which means there's no earth connectivity when the plug is fully in the socket.
trip to Bunnings for a plug with a fuse, snip off non- fused on and install the right one the cable.. Don't know about uk but in Ireland when I was in school wiring plugs was part of basic science lessons. Was expecting a fire!
fabriglas in the early seventies in England it was on the science curriculum (old black/red/green and new blue/brown/yellow-green). Personally I'd chuck the whole thing, some of these leads have copper coated aluminium or steel wire, waste of a good plug :)
Wow I actually have one of these in my house. I have since removed it. Thank you for the video 👍
Even if that plug had a fuse in it would still not be legal here in the UK. The line and neutral pins are too close to the edge of the plug body, I think the minimum allowed is 9 mm, and the earth pin looks like it's partly sleeved,which it mustn''t be. I can't see if the line and neutral pins are sleeved, which they must be.
You're right +Stephen Furley - That minimum distance is to prevent your fingers curling round under the plug and touching the contacts when you're removing it - It's really a rather important safety feature. The line and neutral pins on the plug were sleeved, but so too was the earth pin, which again is incorrect. Happy Holidays. Cheers!!
Cool video and such dodgy leads are still on sale in 2018.
BTW, U.K. homes have Ring Circuits and the National Grid has Ring Mains. At college we were always told off for using the wrong terminology.
All genuine U.K. plugs are rated at 13amps and one needs to read the data from the cable sheath to calculate it's current rating e.g. 0.75mm flex is typically 6amps assuming it is really copper and the makers are not lying.
Fake U.K. plug fuses also exist which cannot clear high fault currents and may not even have the correct size wire so beware of these also.
96 chinese folks hated this video because rubbish cable made in china
What was the real wire guage inside the cable? I guess it's either iron or copper clad aluminum, since copper on its own is too expensive.
So even if this had a 5 amp fuse, a 4.8 amp device would run fine and you'd never know till the cable melted?!
Imagine if that cable was hidden away behind some appliance, it's doesn't bear thinking about.
House fires, which kill people, are not caused by short circuits which rapidly trip breakers. They are caused by insulation failure due to chafing, rodents, age etc, which brings live and neutral wires into close proximity. This then draws an arc and takes a current which can be of any value up to the breaker rating. So if there is no fuse in the plug there can be a continuous current which is greater than the rating of the cable but less than the breaker rating resulting in it overheating and catching fire. This is the real advantage of having a fuse in the plug, it allows you to have a fuse which matches the rating of the flex to the appliance. This is not really anything to do with the use of ring mains, it applies equally to the 16A or 20A radial circuits used elsewhere in the world. Even that rubbish aluminium cored cable in this video would have been ok if it had a 3A fuse in the plug. The only problem with fused plugs is that it's difficult to get people to actually fit the correct size of fuse, appliances especially those supplied from abroad often come with a default 13A fuse regardless of the size of the flex.
The plug reminds myself of the older unfused round pin plugs. A similar warning has appeared on J Ward's and Big Clive's posts.
2.5 ohms! So about 1.25 ohms per metre of wire = 1250 ohms/km. Even thin 7/0.2 copper wire is 88 ohms/km.
One 0.2 mm diameter strand of the 7-strand 7/0.2 wire = 88x7 = 620 ohms/km.
So their effective diameter of copper wire is 0.2 mm x (620/1250) = 0.1 mm, or 100 microns diameter / 25.4 = 0.0039 inches diameter (of copper). The I2R losses are impressively dangerous!
Yes, buy what about circuit breakers? Fused plugs are a legacy of the days before circuit beakers and I am sure that to meet insurance requirements, old houses must be re-wired using circuit breakers.
+Louisoft01 that's crazy. 32amp at 240v for domestic outlets, that's enough for a heat pump. surely such items don't share a circuit with the room sockets? that's plain barmy. even in my father's house in the uk built 70years ago, the heavy power items had independent circuits from the ring mains and i am certain that the ring mains were fused at much less than 32A. 32a for a ring main is crazy and unecessary.
+984francis An electric kettle can easily hit 13a on its own and yes there are some fairly powerful heaters too.
+Alex Atkin that's over 3kw for a kettle? No. I use a 750w heater in a 15' by 12' room and it does fine. the circuit is 120v at 15a. I never pop breakers. in effect you are claiming that the uk is worse at fuel economy than the us!!!
Hi +984francis - I have a large number of 3KW rated devices here in the UK... All of my kettles, fan heaters and oil-filled radiators are capable of pulling up to 3KW. It's not really a question of fuel economy though - the greenhouse and shed are normally unheated, and more watts into the heater means that they heat up faster when I start using them. Cheers!!
It seems that mr 984 francis is in a country with american style wiring.... so has no idea of ring circuits
Why did you pluged snake to the socket? You suprised that snake droped his skin?
Would be interesting to plug that dodgy cable into 240V mains instead of 15V, either it would act as a fuse and melt a part of it very quickly or more likely trip the 32A house circuit breaker. I'd like to also test it using a 30A standard consumer unit wire fuse instead of circuit breaker as I think wire fuses are slower.
Hi +Nigel2AB - I've actually got another identical cable kicking around (though I did strip back some of the insulation to check the quality of the conductors (which aren't even made of copper)). With a short at the end of the cable, it has a resistance of 2.1ohms, so plugged directly into the mains, it would try and pull 114Amps of current and blow the fuse wire - However, we used the cable to power a a 2KW (8.3A) fan heater, then the 2.1 ohm resistance of the cable would cause a 17.43V voltage drop, and it would be emitting 144.7 watts of heat, which I'm pretty sure would melt the insulation nice and quickly... and then it would short circuit and make some truly impressive sparks :) That would be fun to see... I'll think about doing it one day. Cheers!!
+Jim Conner Yes that would be fun to watch!
We make a big deal in the UK with fuses to suit the wiring, but it's only really the wiring that needs to suit the appliance current. Obviously the wire in your video is dangerous because someone could plug it into a kettle (or as you say a fan heater), the wire would slowly heat up and likely to cause a fire. But having no fuse isn't really a big deal because any over-current fault occurring in the appliance or lead is almost always going to be a short-circuit, which at 240V the wire would either blow itself apart or the main 30A fuse would blow before anything gave off enough heat to start a fire. I saw an example of this in 1970's houses (and older) in Italy which had no fuses at all, apart from the main 60A breaker. Little thin flexes supplying lights were used, as in any house in any country, but effectively un-fused. I found it amusing, any short-circuit and the wires would just go bang and act as a fuse.
Of course it's 'safer' to use fuses to suit the wire thickness, but when you think about it there must be many 13A plugs in the UK wired to 3A flexes for lights, but with 13A fuses in the plugs instead of the correct 3A fuse.
So... This means if there was a short on the end of the cable that was drawing less power than the circuit breaker in the electrical power panel is rated for, and the power in the cable was too high for its gauge, there is the chance this cable can melt down, cause an internal short, and thus cause a fire.
I would think there must be many tens of thousands of users with under rated power cables, and not having proper protection. Then in many homes there are probably dangerous appliances and dangerous light bulbs bought mostly on line that would not be approved. We have to be very careful.
Jerry G. Looks like the fire may not wait for the internal short. This cable, falsely labeled for 10A could be plugged between a perfectly working outlet and a perfectly working 7A load, cause a 15V power drop in the cable (which the load may survive because 240V minus 15V is plenty for a device that works in 220V countries too). The cable will melt itself and set fire to anything nearby.
This is why I never fit 32A circuit breakers on my distribution or fuse box, or some people like calling it a consumer unit, 32A even on a ring mains it is very unsafe, no one should use so many appliances that their combined load on a single ring mains exceeds 16A . It is a lot safer to go for 16A than a 32A breaker, since you can never trust someone plugging in an appliance that has a dodgy plug or wire, however, i will differ in my opinion regarding the lead not having any fuse unless it was for a kettle, for most switched mode power supplies that use diodes and rectifiers and capacitors, they have their own fuse built in the circuit, which would go first, so don't just discriminate against foreign goods if they don't always meet BS. You can melt any wire by passing high current through it over a period of time, even a British plug with a 13A can catch fire, I have come across loads where despite the plug being a BS where wires have been terminated lose, causing heat or burns, fuse holders lose causing fuses to heat and plug pins to tarnish sockets with heat marks. Most electricians will not agree with me, but if a car is capable of doing 200MPH, it does not mean that you should push it to its limit, 70MPH is the maximum speed limit in UK, a ring mains is capable of handling 32A, but that does not mean you should subject it to 32A, so I beg to differ and will not ever use a 32A BREAKER, in the last 25 years I have not had my breaker trip due to overloading.
My ground floor has the living room, kitchen, hallway and 2 bedrooms, how on Earth would I power all of that on 16A? Every time I had the microwave and kettle on at the same time someone's TV or stereo would turn off.
@@krashd exactly, appliances with heaters take high current, so in many cases you wouldnt be able to have more than one on at a time
Fake stuff are everywhere. I was preparing for a trip to the UK and needed US-to-UK plug adapters. I went on Amazon and ordered a couple of different brands. I noticed one brand had a fuse whereas the other brand did not have a fuse. I did a little more investigation of the fused travel plug and learned that it was a requirement specially when using US devices in the UK. A little more searching on Amazon showed that many such plug adapters are not in compliance with BS8546 nor have a BS1362 type fuse installed. Travelers using unfused type adapter plugs are putting themselves at great risk should their device(s) develops an internal short circuit. Would hate to see the device external cable go up in flames.
Aaaah, I wanted that plug.
I would have got that out in the garden and *RIPPED IT RIIIIIIIIGHT UP* on 32A as a minimum! :D
I have a setup which can pump a good 40A for 5 mins or so, and that cord WOULD NOT have survived for the first minute. *_I WANT FLAAAAAMES!_*
Probably, the reason why that cable got as hot as it did, is because of a lower-than-needed cross-sectional area of wiring, OR it was copper-clad aluminium in there and not solid copper. Worse still.... copper clad STEEL.
It's shame that you didn't test the resistance of each conductor before giving it a caning out in the garden..... we would have found out so much more as to what is going on inside the cable without having to cut it open.
I have seen other similar vids on fake plugs like this and resistance measurements have been into the whole ohms. A cord that short would probably read less than 0.1 ohms, but that fake one?
It wouldn't have surprised me if each conductor read differently, and if there wasn't an earth wire at all. There have been cases of these fake plugs having 3-core flex, but the earth conductor was never connected up inside the moulded plug! This means very little to no quality controls at the factory..... just bang-out thousands of them at rock-bottom prices.
They probably change hands in their hundreds many times over before an end-user gets ahold of them.... that way, if one goes up in flames or someone gets buzzed, the manufacturer of them cannot be traced.
The main thing though.... at least you identified it as a fake plug AND then busted it.
That way, no one can be injured or killed by it.
Thanxx for showing,
-BoomBoxDeluxe.
_8th May 2016, 20.20_
Hi +BoomBoxDeluxe - Nice to have you over here on my channel... I've watched a whole bunch of your videos in the past (hence the reason I have my own variac now).
I actually have a second one of these cables which I've already cut open... I can tell you that it is definitely CCA conductors inside it and the resistance of the cables is around 1.5 ohms per meter ( It was 3.1 Ohms from live to neutral connections in the UK plug when I had the IEC end sorted out). Both live and neutral conductors are the same. The combined diameter of the wire strands in each conductor is around 0.3mm... I've seen significantly more substancial wiring in a pair of headphones.
When I was testing out the conductors to work out if they were CCA or CC-steel I put a lighter flame to one of the strands and saw it burst into a shower of sparks in a most satisfying manner... It was a very thermite-like reaction... I know you can make a more reactive thermite compound from aluminium poweder mixed with copper-oxide, and it struck me that these wire strands may be at pretty much the perfect ratio for them to act as thermite... I'm planning on having a play around with these wire strands some more sooner or later to see if I can get a more spectacular failure... When the copper outer layer gets red-hot in air, it will oxidise, helping it to feed the reaction...
If I had more than one of these cables remaining, I'd have loved to send one to you for you to destroy... but sadly I've only got one left now, and I want to play with that one myself.
All the best... Keep up the good work on your videos.
Cheers!!
P.S. Sorry for taking such a long time to reply... I've been away from the keyboard a lot for the past couple of weeks.
Are you forgetting every house has a breaker box? The circuit breaket would trip far before something would start fire?
Or am i missing the point of the video?
The circuit breaker will trip out at 16A or 32A current depending on the breaker, whereas this cable will catch fire at 5A current. The breaker wouldn't trip as the current is not high enough. Cheers!!
Have seen plugs which are the right size and are fused (though the fuse was rubbish and practically fell apart) and which carry something resembling a BS kitemark but which had shrouded earth pins and which failed a PAT test due to no earth connection. It's even harder for the layman to spot dodgy products unfortunately.
Maybe there's a fuse inside the transformer for the LED strips. So putting one in the plug also would be redundant.
Indeed, if you like your shorted cables hot!
Very informative. But it sounds like the UK needs to update their wiring standards. That's just a dangerous way to do it, especially since you guys run 220v on a normal wall socket instead of 115v like in the USA.
Had it been fused it would not have made any difference even a 3a fuse may not blow at 3a, they require significant overload. That cable is more than likely not copper but some crappy plated aluminium. The insulation liquidity is disturbing. The other issue is sleeving on earth pin. Many trailing sockets have the earth contact close to the insertion point meaning once pushed in you're probably not earthed.
Well worth taking the time to watch. Good info.
not an expert here, but don't think that makes much sense to compare that cable rating for AC and testing when it melts using dc...
At least when you get one of these shitty leads you've got some free low voltage wire. How much current do you think that would handle at say 12V?
Edit: Wait, I've just noticed it's only at 15V!
A fuse in the plug doesn't make sense for me, there is a fuse anyway in nearly all appliances, so you end up with two fuses, or more if you use extensions and power strips.
Also you really get more protection for faults that draw more current than the cable rating but not so high to trip the circuit breaker, so not dead shorts, and these kind of shorts are very rare.
Also for me it doesn't make sense that in the UK you have all that current in every plug, what you use them for ? You maybe need that current for big appliances, but why have all the plug rated for 32A ? It's a waste of wire, most of the appliances will not draw more than 10A, where I live I can't even draw more than 16A from the grid and for me it's fine, having 32A in a single plug is insane for me.
At each point you are protecting the cable beyond the fuse, so the 32A fuse protects the 32A ring, a 13A fuse may protect the cable and power strip and a 5A fuse may protect the cable to a laptop power supply. Hopefully, the laptop power supply will then have an internal fuse to protect the cable that goes to the laptop, which will have its own internal fuse. At no point in this design can a cable be overloaded as a fuse should blow first.
As shown in the video an overloaded cable is a risk (smoke, heat, damage and maybe even electrocution) so low-cost fuses have a lot of possible value.
Will there be a part 2: Grilled rabbit?
One other thing, if it was plugged into a cooker outlet socket, you can pass up to 45amps! Wow...
I have learned that 99% or more of Chinese products are incorrectly rated.
Most of the time you must take the stated rating and divide by 4 to get an actual maximum usage rating.
Also note that the earth pin on the Chinese plug has an insulation coating on it...it should not have any at all.
Setup up properly, these plugs are perfectly legit and safe to use. They often come on lighting equipment as the manufacturer assumes you will mount them plugged in an inaccessible place - where it’s awkward to change the fuse- and fed from a fused spur.
For example, if you were to setup an led strip under a kitchen wall cabinet, you might conceivably plug it into a socket hidden on top of the cabinets but power the whole thing from one fused wall mounted switch. Therefor if the fuse blows you don’t need fanny about on a ladder. The same would be true for disco lights which often come with these.
Obviously the best way to do it would be to cut the plug off and wire it straight into a fused switch, but there is convenience factor with not doing that, especially in the context of (stage) lighting.
The problem is that a lot of these cheapo Chinese systems don’t come with any proper warning or instructions.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment, but I would beg to differ on the point you're making that these plugs can ever be legit and safe to use..
The fact that the plug has '10A MAX' embossed onto it when it is clearly not capable of handling that current means that it is a dangerous knock-off. The plug fits into sockets which are designed to handle 32A max on ring-final circuits, and therefore it really should be fused. We have BS456 unfused 5A round-pin plugs which are specifically designed for lighting circuits, and often used in theatre lighting, where they are attached to a fused system upstream. The BS1362 standard for these 13A square-pin main plugs states that the cable should be fused to protect that cable itself, and the device attached to the cable should be internally fused if necessary. It is specifically because the UK regulations prohibit sale of devices without a fitted plug (because many consumers weren't able to wire up the plugs themselves) that we see this kind of dangerous knock-off. I'm sorry, but there really is no way that this cable can ever be deemed safe under any circumstances.
I hope this doesn't come across as me having a go at you or anything like that, but as you can probably guess from the content of the video, I'm pretty horrified that cables like this get sold in the first place. Thanks again for taking the time watch my video and also to write a well thought out comment.
Cheers!!
That cable is bad but I notice for your test you didn't ground the socket.
+Tzimnewman3 - I was running from an isolated DC supply, so there was no reference for earth.... but thinking about it now.... if I'd hooked the negative terminal of the DC supply to both the neutral and earth pins, it would have been a more accurate failure scenario, as it would have allowed for the cable to short between live-and-earth as well as live-and-neutral after the insulation all melted.... Didn't think of that at the time. Will try to remember to do it next time. Cheers!!
The Chinese often use extremely thin leads in their mains cables to save a few cents in manufacturing costs.
I thought this was strange when i bought an 18360 battery charger, thanks mate
Something to hearten you.....
I tracked down at least one of the Chinese factories/major distributors - "Shenzhen Le Tao Xing Technology Company Ltd" and had a chat with them about the lack of safety of their product. They first responded with "if you don't like them, don't buy them" and then when I emphasised that my concern was safety, "We don't understand why you are complaining, we have sold thousands of these into the UK with no problem"
Armed with _that_ admission and a couple of the offending plugs, I've been escalating through my local Trading Standards through to National Trading standards and now they're talking to Chinese authorities with an eye to getting enforcement done in China (remember, everything is licensed there - no license == no exports) and getting production of the dangerous plugs stopped along with production dies destroyed. This is looking more and more feasible - the USA has been doing the same thing with their CPSC having established offices in Shenzhen and getting good results - they're actively inviting other country regulators to join them in the effort to get unsafe products eliminated from chinese exports.
Here's hoping it plays out. Product safety is in everyone's interest.
Oh well done. About time someone did this.
Totally brilliant warning sadly cheapjacks will never listen.
Thanks old fruit good to see someone spreading common sense which these days is in short supply. The P. C. Brigade being lazy and useless call anything thorough or done with care and attention :-::obsessive compulsive disorder. No skill or attention to detail or a these days their attention span is virtually zero. Good luck you will need it :-: you can’t educate PORK !!!!!
What if the wires are rated for 100 amps? Do I still need a fuse?
Looking at the adverts below your video there, I can see a 'round-pin' plug. Who still makes or even uses them nowadays? I dare say they'll be properly made with fuse-holders, unlike any of the older ones I've seen, or the 2-pin round-pin ones.
It's good to point out that not all is what it seems and getting cabling guage right is paramount for safety on any electrical device. It can't be said enough.
I still had a 10amp fuse somewhere...
Unofficial UK plugs and sockets are used in hospitals, typically to stop people from trying to fill up the socket for their own purposes, usefull if you are greedy and don't want to hand out electricity.
@@ss_super_steve I can well imagine, especially with the bedside contraptions for the patient to use for pay-per-everything; tv, phone connections and radio and the like. I've heard of these but never seen one in the hospitals, thankfully. That and the expansion of our own Hand-Held devices and their chargers. The Hospital trusts must be packing it in there!
Cynical people, some would say Pragmatists but if it happened to them...?
@@Flymochairman1 Okay, I guess.
@@ss_super_steve PS I hope you had a Good Birthday and the new phone works. Take Care and Keep Well, young man!
Is it a Copper wire or maybe it is stainless steel coated with Copper and that is why you can not get the 30Amp? And that is why it got so hot with 5A. A .75mm copper should be fine with 10Amps. Stainless wire would not
I'm a bit thick when it comes to electric, how come your power supply didn't blow or pop a fuse when you short circuited the cable
Hi dooronron69 - The power supply I was using is current limited (65.9Amp max) and short circuit protected, so i knew that it wasn't going to pop any fuses. Cheers!!
+Jim Conner thanks, I got one of those leads with a battery charger that charged 18650's on ebay, I didn't use it because it had no fuse, glad I didn't now,
The cable has almost 3 ohms of resistance? Unbelievable I bet it’s not even copper
hi i still have the old 1960s MK 3 round pin plugs dotted around (no fuse in the plug ) are they still safe to use?
kind regards
david
Hi David - They're not just from the 1960s... Both plugs and sockets for 5A and 15A round-pin plugs are still easily available today, and still covered by all the wiring regulations. They're not unsafe as long as they've been wired up correctly in the house, with each socket having it's own 15A fuse back at the fuse box. The power cord from the plug to the device should also have the same 15A rating, but as the plugs are rewireable people can easily connect more lightweight cable (i.e. 3A cabling to a table lamp) which isn't capable of handling the load correctly and create a potentially dangerous situation. Because of this, I'd recommend getting them updated to the square-pin types. Also if your house has those sockets dotted around, then some of the wiring probably pre-dates the 1947 change in the regulations - If so, then the wiring would be around 70 years old - I believe that the PVC insulation around the wires can become brittle and crack over that kind of time span, so I reckon it's worth at least getting it checked over to make sure it's all still OK. Hope that helps. Cheers!!
@@ThingsWhichArentWork cables that old may have rubber insulation which has probably now gone brittle and prone to cracking off, like a few in our house
I live in EU and i have a kabel with 3 pin plug from UK and i need to put the 3 pin plug in a 2 pin plug adapter. But i can't get it in the adapter.
You should ge one of these ultra-chinese versions of that cable which Dave once ranted over. With something like a tenth of the wire diameter that would be needed to carry the current. It would act as both current limiter and fuse on its own! :D
You failed to mention the sleeved earth pin.
asking about I got sony amp from uk it has 250v plug wanton to work usa power 110v adapter will it work not knowing . nerver hurts to ask
The shit plug and cable I have came supplied with my new dslr camera kit from a UK company and it was not cheap, when I challenged the supplier the idiot behind the counter told me I didn't know what I was talking about....as it was ok to have non fused plugs with low power items, I Really Dispair
if it was a plug containing a transformer then he is right.
+Rob Harrison The point of the fuse in the plug is to protect the cabling from the plug to the device. As you correctly say, wall-wart style plugs which do not have any kind of cable to protect are allowed to rely on the protection built directly into them. Cheers!!
Great test, wire melting at 5 - 6 Amps, great fire hazard. Love your bunny.
Hi RODALCO2007 - I'm a great fan of your videos, so it's really nice to have you stop by over here to watch one of mine. Hope all is good with you. Keep zapping those wasps. Cheers!!