Am 30.06.07 14.04 schrieb John Larkin:
On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 13:35:18 -0500, Wolfi
wrote:


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..

Not in my experience. I've owned houses that were first wired in the
early 1900's, and I don't recall ever having a bad wall outlet. Most
of the really old ones have been replaced, not because they failed but
rather because they had to be upgraded to accept a 3-prong plug.

A decent 3-prong molded plug, plugged into even a cheap (79 cent) dual
wall outlet, seems to be perfectly reliable. Our biggest problem is
cats chewing on the cords, some of which seem to be tastier than
others.

It's not necessarily the wall outlet itself I had bad experience with weakened
contacts but much more those extremely poor designed extension cords with
those 3 socket heads. And I also have seen so many messed up cable plugs, due
to the lack of a decent mechanical support from the socket moulding and plug
housing. Those often flaky cheapest style flat contacts bend very easily,
especially if used on power cords connected to class II devices, which do not
require a protective ground.

But also those 3-pin plugs come out of the wall socket quite easily, when a
heavy rubber cable for an air compressor with that weird AWG format, probably
coming close to a wire cross section of some 3.something mm², is connected to
it. Despite the thicker, round third ground pin, the plug comes out very
easily quite a bit, exposing dangerously the 2 spade contacts, so that I
wouldn't want a toddler to be near it to put its tiny fingers across them.
The extremely poor electrical safety is, btw., besides the far below
suboptimal mechanical stability of the whole socket-plug system, my biggest
critic of the US domestic 110V/15A power connector system.

Or think of a vacuum cleaner with roll-up cable, where you bend or even break
the plug contacts quite easily while vacuuming around the room and putting
some tension on the power cord, especially if the stress is applied under an
angle than 90° from the wall.

Mechanically and under safety aspects it just is an extremely poor and flimsy
design and it doesn't surprise me a bit, that every other report in the news
about a fire breaking out in US houses is claimed due to "electric
wiring/overload/failure", you name it.

It is quite interesting though, that the later added third ground pin isn't of
the same flimsy flat spade type anymore, but with its round 5mm style much
more like the also 5mm Schuko plug pin type.