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Other Vintage Household Electrical or Electromechanical Items For discussions about other vintage (over 25 years old) electrical and electromechanical household items. See the sticky thread for details. |
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6th Aug 2021, 7:22 pm | #61 |
Dekatron
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Re: Mains plug restoration
No. It was a very sensible, and fully "backwards compatible" enhancement to the standard.
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6th Aug 2021, 7:43 pm | #62 |
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Backwards compatible maybe, but it must have added to the fabrication cost, and it also thins down the brass in the pin over the insulated length. This must make it more fragile. In principle it will make it a bit more resistive too, and therefore more prone to heating, but I suspect that that's negligible compared with other, thinner, elements in the current path inside the plug and the socket.
However if it saves a lot of injuries and deaths then it's obviously worthwhile. If it saves none then it isn't. I wonder if anyone knows whether it does ? Cheers, GJ
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6th Aug 2021, 7:58 pm | #63 |
Hexode
Join Date: Oct 2012
Location: London, UK.
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Doubt if many lives are saved. 240v across a finger won't kill, it will just be very uncomfortable.
They did this exercise in Australia with their thin pins and found the pins tended to break off and remain in the sockets. How safe is that? Not sure if they have fixed that problem. |
6th Aug 2021, 8:26 pm | #64 | |
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Quote:
I did this countless times in customers houses to connect my soldering iron.
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6th Aug 2021, 9:59 pm | #65 | |
Nonode
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Quote:
Yes there is a large degree of overlap between the rules, and yes the laws of physics still apply, however the different standards each have their own rules and caveats, and not many people know with any depth of certainty any of the rules that apply to maybe two standards if they are lucky! This is where problems arise, urban myths start to spring up and mistakes start to be made. People whom are otherwise intelligent (and even experts in their own field) start to stray into unfamiliar territory and make big mistakes in the belief they are correct. This is not a dig at anyone in particular btw.
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6th Aug 2021, 10:08 pm | #66 |
Octode
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Sleeved pins are a good idea. They make an unlikely electric-shock scenario even more unlikely.
Pretending that unsleeved pins are suddenly somehow 'lethal' is not such a good idea. THAT is 'safety gone mad'. |
6th Aug 2021, 10:27 pm | #67 | |
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Quote:
Cheers, GJ
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7th Aug 2021, 1:44 pm | #68 |
Heptode
Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: Blackburn, Lancashire, UK.
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Interestingly, the modern MK cooker control unit in my kitchen (pic 1 - installed new last year) has those rotary shutters.
The previous larger CCU (pic 2 - installed new in 1980) had earth pin operated shutters, while all the other MK wall sockets in the house had the rotary ones. I very much prefer the new understated white switches to the red ones of the previous CCU - although they're still the same size.
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7th Aug 2021, 10:33 pm | #69 | |
Octode
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Quote:
The socket was rarely used, possibly only when my Mum needed to use a hand mixer for something being heated in a pan.
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8th Aug 2021, 12:17 am | #70 |
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Location: Brentwood, Essex, UK.
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Shortly after the sleeved plug requirement came in, I ordered some stuff from one of the advertisers in one of the hobby magazines (Practical Wireless or Television), and included a couple of 13A plugs in my order. Well they did have sleeves, but the sleeving consisted of rather thin-walled plastic tubing that had evidently been pushed (or shrunk) over the pins of Hong Kong-manufactured unsleeved plugs, as the metal of the pins was of uniform cross-section over their entire lengths. The sleeving soon split and broke off, but as the plugs were cheap it wasn't worth complaining. I just bought some proper UK-made ones from a local high street shop.
When my son modernised his kitchen some 5 years ago, I replaced the original bulky (and not properly recessed) cooker point and 13A socket with a compact MK one (with neons), the size of a conventional double socket. I was disappointed by the quality: the neons didn't line up with their transparent red windows, there was complete absence of any means for positively keeping them in position, and the act of pushing on their leads to position them, made the red windows ping out: the windows were simply snapped into position and were only retained by ridiculously-small detents. A bit over-value-engineered methinks. Last edited by emeritus; 8th Aug 2021 at 12:24 am. Reason: typos |
8th Aug 2021, 7:57 am | #71 | |
Heptode
Join Date: Dec 2020
Location: Swaffham, Norfolk, UK.
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Quote:
What happens when your other hand or another body part is touching an earthed conductor? I have first hand experience of this, in my first job I was using a 240v scroll saw, the plug was the older type, socket not switched, system, (customers), not protected by an RCD. I wasn't killed, obviously, but did sustain a dislocated shoulder. Many pundits have said since what should have been done regards the work equipment, environment etc. But all it needed to prevent the accident was a fifty pence shrouded pin plug. I didn't put two fingers round the plug body onto the pins, my little finger on my right hand touched the live pin and my other hand was flat on an earthed stainless worktop. Very few people are ever electrocuted, but a lot die from secondary impact, falling from a ladder for instance, that is the real danger of electric shocks. So what the question is, is what number of avoidable injury's or deaths are acceptable, not if this kind of regulation actually saves lives: these sorts of rules are made for better or worse as a reaction to a problem, the unshrouded pins of old 13A mains plugs were obviously causing significant footfall at hospital AE departments for the regs on plug top designs to be ammended. A lot has been written about the safety of vintage equipment, an old valve radio that is properly maintained for instance, is safe because the user is protected from casual contact of live parts, it is not the case with these unshrouded plugs. Display them as curios, or bin them. |
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8th Aug 2021, 11:41 am | #72 |
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Just so
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8th Aug 2021, 12:33 pm | #73 |
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Re: Mains plug restoration
There is a story that shrouded pins were introduced primarily to stop children and malicious individuals from using a coin to short out the pins, which is otherwise very easy to do with a BS1363 plug. Switching the socket on would produce an impressive bang and shut down the ring main.
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11th Aug 2021, 7:46 am | #74 | |
Heptode
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Quote:
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11th Aug 2021, 2:41 pm | #75 |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
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Re: Mains plug restoration
A 1p piece under a BC lamp does much the same thing, so they should have banned BC lamp holders and lamps in favour of those foreign ES items.
Oh wait, they didn't need to ban them, they are slowly disappearing anyway, through attrition / commercial forces.
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11th Aug 2021, 3:27 pm | #76 |
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Re: Mains plug restoration
But of course ES bulbs introduce their own problems, given that the metal collar is connected to one side of the mains, so it's vital that the socket is wired with this side connected to neutral.
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11th Aug 2021, 4:29 pm | #77 |
Hexode
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Re: Mains plug restoration
I wonder if, like me, Paul and Rambo were unfortunate enough to read "Calling Base 10" by Douglas Castle, (1943) in the Blackie's books for boys and girls series at junior school, in which the juvenile hero does indeed employ the coin in the light fitting trick to evade his Nazi captors?
Also, thanks to Winston for the info on the Malaysian plug key and link to that comprehensive document - very informative. At least the Plasplugs tester version has the text "remove after testing" and identifies L and N correctly! Cheers Chris |
13th Aug 2021, 7:12 pm | #78 |
Hexode
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Location: Oswestry, Shropshire, UK.
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Re: Mains plug restoration
My mother still has the butter knife, with two chunks missing from the blade, with which, back in the early 1970s, my younger brother, then a toddler, removed a plug from a socket. Shrouded pins are probably a good idea.
Regards, Richard |
13th Aug 2021, 10:29 pm | #79 |
Octode
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Re: Mains plug restoration
Which is damn near impossible given how European lamp plugs can go both ways in a Shuko socket.
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13th Aug 2021, 11:53 pm | #80 |
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Re: Mains plug restoration
I think it was mentioned on another thread some time ago that the current UK regs do not require the threaded part of ES sockets to be connected to N.
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