Am 29.06.07 11.50 schrieb Eeyo
wrote:
(Geoffrey S. Mendelson) wrote:
The current EU standard is a 2 pin plug that looks like the one you have
not seen in 20 years.
This is only confusing things. There are other types as well, but the
ones that dont fit UK sockets are todays EU ones.
There is no such thing as an *EU* plug.
Sure it is!
Thankfully it's one thing they haven't tried to standardise.
Here you are wrong.
The Euro plug is a flat, 2 prong, 4mm round contact plug, with pins 17mm
apart, fitting into regular 16A/240V outlets, but meant only for low power
devices. Its current rating usually is only 2,5A and they are widely used for
connecting consumer electronics (where the other end of the cable often is
pluggable too, having the 8-shape socket, if you look at it, with 2 small
receptacles 10 mm apart), small AC/DC power supplies, 240V to 2...24V
transformers and such.
They fit into the round 5mm receptacles of German type 3 contact "Schuko"
sockets, where the plug body actually dives into the outlet cover by some
20mm, allowing it to take on mechanical forces applied to the cable, rather
than having the contacts themselves deal with it.
The lack of appropriate machanical stress handling is my biggest rejection of
the American type 130V power plug system, in addition to extremely poor design
of those flat contact receptacles, which wear out very easily, giving poor
contact with all bad things to follow..