Beware of fake mains cables.

[Sideband]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I'm not sure if the 'fusewire end being visible' is necessarily a fail:

Sorry IT'S A FAIL!!!

Proper fuses are welded. Look on the website I linked to. BS1363 is very specific. Anyway the point of the pictures was to show the common fakes around not to argue over what is or is not considered a fail. What may have been OK in the 70's IS NOT OK now. A lot of the changes have been due to failures discovered by experience, one of which was loose end caps and crimped wires.

The point is, if British standards says it is a fail....then it's a fail.

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

If your house burns-down because of a dodgy fuse, your lawyers can no doubt extract a horrendous penalty (so you never need to work again...) from the suppliers of said fuse, on a "no-win-no-fee" basis.

....if you could find out the supplier/manufacturer!! Sorry you have no idea!

[Philips210]

Originally Posted by Sideband

There are also some that are not quite the right diameter so not only are they too short, they are also loose in the fittings...

I am sure I've come across this in the past where there is an inadequate contact from the fuse clips in the plugtop. ISTR after replacing the fuse from a reputable UK manufacturer the fuse then felt right in the clips without having to re-tension them. I have occasionally had to re-tension the clips probably on a cheaper type of plug. The fuse in one plug had almost black end caps probably due to local heating because of a poor contact in it's clips. That plug was obviously scrapped for safety reasons.

I was speaking to an electrician of many years in the trade and he told me back in 2000 the concern of fake Chinese fuses without a sand filling. When a short occurred in a particular appliance the plugtop fuse blew, literally! The top of the plug was blown off the base by the blast exposing the live contacts. A quite dangerous situation all because the fuse didn't have a sand filling to quench the arc on failure.

It must be an absolute nightmare for Trading Standards to keep on top of all these dangerous goods. We hardly had the same kind of problems or worries when we were making our own products. BEAB, ASTA and British Standards have always been good for the industry and are highly respected in my opinion. The audacity of putting the safety approvals on a dangerous fuse is beyond redemption.

Regards
Symon.

[Oldelectronics]

The price differences in fuses doesn't help all of which may be perfectly fine and comply with the appropriate BS I suppose the only way to check for piece of mind if worried is to sacrifice one to the hammer to see whats inside?

[G8UWM-MildMartin]

On some, it suffices to pull the end caps off gently by finger...

[Sideband]

...and to show some typical examples of fake plugs, connectors and markings please see attached pictures. The plug shows a part-insulated earth pin....not allowed, but that is not the only fault....the pins do not fit a test gauge, being incorrect spacing and also they are too short. They fitted a 13A socket...just but it was a very tight fit. The fake fuse was shown earlier. At the other end of the cable was a standard figure 8 connector...also fake, complete with fake markings. The connecting 'barrels' in these should be 4mm from the end of the plastic, these were just over 1mm. It was also very loose when connected to the appliance (a charger).

Neither the plug, connector or lead had been anywhere near a safety test house before being marketed.

Incidentally the mains lead was marked 0.75mm(sq) but when tested was well below the correct cross-sectional area stated.

[ms660]

Those figure of eight mains female connectors and others of a similar principle have always made me wonder why they are allowed, consumer safety not of paramount concern?

Lawrence.

[Oldelectronics]

I will be checking the last ones I bought later Martin!! The plug photos are good examples Sideband.

[Lucien Nunes]

most other governances don't have fuses in plugs and we don't see them burning-down on a regular basis.

This is because they use lower-rated socket-outlet circuits. A 15A socket-outlet in the US will be protected by a 15A breaker, likewise 16A in Europe. All compliant flexes are compatible with those ratings (only just in some cases) so fused plugs are not required. The disadvantage is the large number of separate circuits required.

In the UK, because of our unique ring-final system that allows large numbers of appliances to be used on one circuit due to the much greater load diversity, we protect our 13A sockets with 32A breakers and thus the fuse in the plug is an essential component of the system.

Those figure of eight mains female connectors and others of a similar principle have always made me wonder why they are allowed, consumer safety not of paramount concern?

Correctly made, they are safe, effective and economical. These defective types with the contacts incorrectly located in the body can be very nasty, I had one where you could actually touch the contacts with a finger (a real one, not a test finger).

[ms660]

""Quote:
Those figure of eight mains female connectors and others of a similar principle have always made me wonder why they are allowed, consumer safety not of paramount concern?
Correctly made, they are safe, effective and economical. These defective types with the contacts incorrectly located in the body can be very nasty, I had one where you could actually touch the contacts with a finger (a real one, not a test finger).""

The point I was trying to make was that as far as I understand it a 13 amp outlet socket is shuttered, plugging one of those leads in is in effect just extending that socket but it's now unshuttered if the female connector is not connected to the device, what's going on...

A slight aside...If it were possible I would design the mains outlet sockets so that they could not be switched on unless the plug was fully inserted and that the plug could not be withdrawn unless the socket was switched off.

Lawrence.

[Lucien Nunes]

The female contacts of normal appliance connectors are significantly smaller than those of normal wall sockets, therefore much less likely to allow accidental contact with a foreign object, again with the proviso that the moulding is correct for the design.

Electrically or mechanically interlocked switched sockets are widely used in industry and mandatory for certain applications. They have been made and used for domestic and commercial applications too. Most used a capture-interlock, where the switch could not be closed without a plug in place and the plug could not be withdrawn with the switch on. MK used it on their proprietary gauge which had a notched earth pin, others used adaptations of standard gauges e.g. Crabtree with a hole through the pin. Wandsworth made a proprietary plug with a slotted earth pin that closed a tumbler switch once the plug was making contact and opened it before contact was broken during withdrawal - there was no user-operated switch and the plug was not captured.

BS1363 with sleeved pins and shutters is very effectively immune to accidental contact and is rated to break load, therefore arguably an interlock is redundant.

[vidjoman]

"The point I was trying to make was that as far as I understand it a 13 amp outlet socket is shuttered, plugging one of those leads in is in effect just extending that socket but it's now unshuttered if the female connector is not connected to the device, what's going on..."

The same applies to all the cables to your hi-Fi, computers, kettles etc that use the 3 pin IEC sockets.

[ms660]

Yes, exactly.

Getting back to the fake connector it was mentioned that the metallic part of the socket had to be 4mm in from the face, so that said, imagine a scenario where live chassis equipment was being manufactured, would several live parts visible but recessed 4mm from the user be acceptable?

Lawrence.

[Herald1360]

I don't think visibility is the issue here, accessibility is the point. 400KV transmission lines are very visible!

Safety standards require inaccessibility to standard designs of test finger and probes. They don't consider that an "intelligent idiot" poking wires into the end of figure 8 connectors is a risk worth legislating for. No matter how hard you try to make something idiot proof, nature will always evolve a better idiot

[Philips210]

Talking about accessibility to conductors and fake items aside, has anyone thought of the inherent danger of electric shock from a bayonet or Edison screw bulb holder in say a table lamp if the bulb happened to be missing from the lamp? I always thought that's quite a serious risk and would have thought a shuttered type of holder would have been mandatory.

Symon.

[ms660]

Good point, and getting back to that mains female ended connector, the depth to the contact and the internal diameter of the socket openings reminds me of the control knob/grub screw scenario on live chassis radios, the general consensus of which was to fill the remaining depth of the hole with insulating material as it was considered as a risk not to do so.

Lawrence.

[IanBland]

BC and ES were invented a very long time ago ES should always be connected with the screw collar to neutral. Back in my theatre days, when an artiste requested removal of lamps from dressing room mirror surrounds, we always replaced the lamp with a cork.

[AC/HL]

Yes, nothing fake here, just legacy. There are alternatives nowadays, but the installed base is just too large for now.

[Sideband]

Forgot to mention on the post showing the plug, the distance from the live or neutral pin to the outer edge of the plug casing should be minimum 9.5mm. I think this one measured around 8mm so another point to easily check.

[Oldelectronics]

Following a recent thread about allegedly fake mains leads which leaked over into allegedly fake fuses. As my fuses were inexpensive ones from the internet I was a tad concerned so I broke one open and was very pleased to find all was well this supplier definitely will get a repeat order!

[Hampus]

Originally Posted by Hampus

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.

Thanks for all your input, there seems to be a fair amount of dubious stuff on the market.

To get back to the original scenario I was given a suitable cable from the electrician where I work. It is mains rated but with three black conductors, primarily meant for machinery, automation and such. He had a whole drum of it.

I needed it for a 1920s lamp that I have rewired. Preferably it should be earthed but earthed sockets was not mandatory in Sweden until 1994, so... And the chains would be a problem to earth.

Anyway the wiring now is fresh and it hangs out of reach.