Beware of fake mains cables.

[Hampus]

Hi,

I needed a power cord with three conductors but without a protective earth. Live, live and neutral. These are hard to find, I can get four-conductor cable and cut the earth of but due to space constrains four conductors was a bit to thick. I could have used the green/yellow striped wire as something else but this is just too much of a sin, even though I am only using it for my own project.

I bought a US cable from Hong Kong with a moulded plug and a IEC connector at the other end. According to the marking at the cable the voltage and current rating is the same as the cable that is sold here, only with US colours on the conductors. That way I would get three conductors in white, black and green. That's not according to european standard but still a better solution than using the PE colour as something else. Wire cross area is marked as 0,75 mm2.

The cable has all the usual markings and looks fully legit but when I snipped the plug of I was quite surprised. The colours are strange, the copper wires are thinner and fewer than any other mains cable I have ever seen and the insulation could be peeled of with just my fingers!

I know there are a lot of fake items out there, but I would not have thought that even cables were counterfeited!

Here are a photo of the offender together with a real 0,75 cable.

[broadgage]

These seem to appear regularly, often as included detachable mains leads with cheaper electronic appliances.
Colour code is pot luck, and the wire much smaller than claimed.

I have been known to test mains leads of unknown origins for current carrying capacity. Simply load to about 8 or 10 amps and observe. Real 0.75mm will get slightly warm, the fake stuff gets very hot and may melt, so take care !

Whilst it could be argued that the colour of the wires is relatively unimportant for something never intended to be re wired or re used, the use of undersized wire is potentially very dangerous.

[Nicklyons2]

The 'strange colours' aren't so strange to us in the UK, those are the 3phase colours one would expect in a flex connected to a 'delta' load (i.e. 3phase 3wire). The rotation being R-Y-B.

It is though a valid point you make about poor quality cheap cables. I have two instances; in one case a 6Amp IEC lead with moulded on 13 Amp plug - the 13 Amp plug had no fuse, the live pin connected directly to the flex. Second example, cheap solid single core coax which had no braid screen just a single wire - in effect it was 'figure 8' bell wire dressed up in coax cladding.

[Radio Wrangler]

Anything that sells for actual money will be being faked by someone, somewhere...

David

[deliverance]

Plenty of fake tat about for sure .

[Lucien Nunes]

As well as under-size, such cables can be copper-clad aluminium and even higher resistance than they look. The insulation is often susbtandard as you say, and they are often allied with a defective plug and for those of us with fused plugs, a defective fuse in the plug.

Personally I would sleeve the G/Y conductor with adhesive heatshrink sleeving of a suitable colour where exposed, so that it required force to reveal the original colour code. An alternative might be YY control cable. This has numbered cores + one G/Y core, but the outer diameter is typically less than that of general purpose cable so you might be able to accommodate a 4-core and ignore the G/Y core.

those are the 3phase colours one would expect in a flex

I'm not sure I've ever seen this. For the last 12 years we've been harmonised with brown/black/grey, before that we used brown/black/blue or brown/black/black even while our fixed wiring solid-core cables were still red/yellow/blue. Red/white/blue was the previous flex incarnation and some of our older machines still have this colouring. R/Y/B would be very much the exception I think.

[G4_Pete]

I would never trust the colour codes on any moulded leads after having to troubleshoot an industrial installation where the contractor had purchased multiple moulded plug leads and snipped off the ends and re terminated. They most likly rang through the first one through and then wired the others to match. Unfortunatly the wires were not consistant throuout the batch.
Moral here is beware of snipping the ends and expecting colour consitancy on any moulded cables signal , mains or otherwise.
Pete

[Station X]

That would only be a problem if just one end was snipped off, wouldn't it?

[TonyDuell]

A couple of years ago I bought some telephone extension leads in the local pound shop. I am not sure what the wire was made of, but it was thin, quite springy, and almost impossible to solder. It did look like copper, so presumably copper plating on some other metal.

Horrible stuff....

[AC/HL]

To wire a domestic lightswitch, you should slip brown sleeving over the blue wire to indicate that it may or may not be live. It could similarly be used over the green/yellow.

[Station X]

Has anyone ever taken one of these dodgy leads to Trading Standards?

We get regular stories in the papers here about TS seizing whole container loads of dodgy stuff at Felixstowe docks.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34975178

[G4_Pete]

Just to clarify the leads were snipped some feet away from the plug and then wired into terminals instead of using the moulded plug. The problem was that whilst asembled Pin 1 went to pin 1 and all worked fine but the colour was random. This meant that in the next lead pin one might be red or blue or any othe selection within the cable. These wer D25 coms cables but this has sown the seeds of distrust in any cables where both ends are moulded , they will pass the quality control but may use any random colouring scheme invisable to the user.
pete

[Station X]

I'd better watch out. I'm quite fond of reusing mains leads with moulded on plugs. I'll do continuity tests on them in future.

[AC/HL]

I've used a few too, ideal for those multi-way connectors for the jungle behind the TV. Never had a bad one, but they were cast-offs from professional kit. The one and only unfused one I came across went straight into the recycle box untouched.

[m0cemdave]

Plenty of horror stories (and endless amusement) on Big Clive's youtube channel accessible via:
http://www.bigclive.com/
search for "mains" and similar key words

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Another problem is the so-called "RG58" coaxial cable sold by amateur radio suppliers. A lot of it has very little screening and is complete rubbish. The best way to avoid that problem is to either buy from professional supplers, or if buying surplus "ends of rolls" etc at rallies, look out for RG223 which doesn't seem to suffer from cheap imitations.

[hamid_1]

I started seeing some of those fake mains cables several years ago. They were sometimes supplied with USB hard drive enclosures and laptop chargers.

Here in the UK, our mains plugs are supposed to have a fuse, but some of those mains leads have plugs fitted with no fuse at all, or a fake fuse, making them even more dangerous. Yet they often have fake approval symbols on them, and the average consumer wouldn't realise the cable was fake unless they cut it open or knew what to look for.

There's a whole website dedicated to dangerous fake mains plugs and cords in the UK : http://www.bs1363.org.uk/
On that website there is a page of fake products sold on amazon.co.uk around 5 years ago. Some of the reviews said the cable started sparking or burning. This could have caused a fire, and possibly death. It's really not worth the risk of using one of these cheap cables on the mains.

Although that article was compiled 5 years ago, the fake mains leads keep on appearing. It's difficult to stop them arriving in the UK. They are often shipped from China or Hong Kong directly to the customer, so Trading Standards never get the chance to inspect them. There's clearly a motive for dodgy overseas companies to produce fake mains cables. By using less copper and plastic insulation, they save money and make more profit, without fear of being shut down by the authorities in the UK. There's also a lot of pressure from consumers who want the lowest price. Some suppliers have responded by producing cheap items that do not meet safety standards, simply because they can get away with it. If the customer is unhappy with their fake mains cable, it's not worth sending it back to China for a refund, so nothing will be done.

[broadgage]

Originally Posted by Station X

Has anyone ever taken one of these dodgy leads to Trading Standards?

We get regular stories in the papers here about TS seizing whole container loads of dodgy stuff at Felixstowe docks.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34975178

I have had very negative results when complaining to trading standards about dangerous electrical goods.
The usual reply is along the lines of "the items in question are CE marked, and therefore safe if correctly used in accordance with the suppliers instructions. If you have any concerns regarding the safe use or installation of electrical equipment you should consult a qualified electrician"

It seems to me that some trading standards departments have very little technical expertise and only deal effectively with "low tech" breaches such as short measure in public houses or misleading "money off" promotions.

[WaveyDipole]

I recently needed a 13A extension with at least 2 sockets on the end. One of the appliances being plugged into this would have been a tumble dryer which draws plenty of current, hence a good margin of safety required. I went to Wilco and the first thing I picked up was a 4 way which and looked was very cheap - costing only about a fiver. I was expecting this to be rated at the 'standard' 13A but then realised that the mains flex looked rather thinner than I would have expected, so I checked the rating and it turns out it was rated for 10A not 13A. Even so, I think the flex looked rather thin but that's only my subjective opinion. I also wondered whether the sockets themselves could individually carry 10A each or whether that is the agregate load carrying capacity the 4 sockets combined? Anyway, because they didn't have a suitable ready-made 13A extension I ended up purchasing the neccessary 13A dual socket adapter and made my own extension using 13A flex.

While I'm not suggesting that it was fake, it would seem that one should no longer assume that these mains extensions are rated at the usual 13A but check carefully. I guess this is all in the name of reducing cost but I would have been happy to pay that bit more (and in fact did) to ensure that I was getting an appropriately rated and safe product.

[Nickthedentist]

Originally Posted by WaveyDipole

While I'm not suggesting that it was fake, it would seem that one should no longer assume that these mains extensions are rated at the usual 13A but check carefully. I guess this is all in the name of reducing cost but I would have been happy to pay that bit more (and in fact did) to ensure that I was getting an appropriately rated and safe product.

Low-power extension leads have been around for a long time, and are made by big-name brands supplying well-known shops. I have at home a 20 year-old extension reel with two 13A sockets on it, but it came fitted with a 5 a fuse and was clearly marked with its maximum power rating (as well as warning not to use it unless it was fully unwound). OTOH, I bet most of these got abused and then the fuse replaced with 13A to correct the "fault".

[Refugee]

I have seen one of those 5A extension reels that was totally melted. I am pretty sure it had been fixed with a 13 amp fuse.