Am 30.06.07 14.59 schrieb Spurious Response:
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..


Sleeves and pins... blades and wipers. They both sport similar life
spans and contact mating particulars, and neither is a clear winner, and
BOTH are used in higher power commercial scenarios. They are both proven
winners for the industry.

As far as our "130V" (120V actually)

of course, my bad. I was still thinking in terms of my accustomed european
230V system.

2 and 3 prong plugs and
receptacles not having strain relief... they don't need it. If one
remains within the specs for their use, the outlet/plug combo never sees
any particularly high mechanical stresses placed on it.

Having seen plenty of badly bent contact blades on vacuum, TV set, computer &
monitor, power drill and other shop devices' power cords, I strongly disagree.
Stuff is moved around, either in use or in off state and suddenly the power
cord limits the mobility range. Depending on what kind of bull is pulling on
the other end and he rarely does perpendicular to the wall with the outlet,
those spades bend, simply because there is *no* strain relief *at all* in the
US style socket/plug combo.

The bladed type
actually fights mechanical stress in one plane far better than pins do
without harming contact mating integrity over tens of thousands of stress
cycles.

I can't comment on that, since I don't have reliable data, but simply asked,
what about the other plain? And it also is much easier to have a slotted pipe
type receptacle, with a steel tape spring surrounding it to guarantee,
constant, long-term contact pressure for a round, mechanically sound, 5mm pin,
which gives solid, equal contact all around its circumference.

I think it has a good reason that the later added third ground pin for the US
system isn't of flat spade shape anymore, but strangely a round one now with,
who would have thought it, 5mm like in the Schuko system as well ;-)