On 23/06/2011 10:33, David Robinson wrote:
I've just bought a replacement camera battery charger from eBay.

Three things about it make me concerned.

Firstly, it gets hot. As in "almost wouldn't want a small child to
touch it" hot.

I'm not sure what the applicable safety standard is for a camera battery
charger is, but if it's BS EN 950, let's assume, the max. allowable
temperatures for external touchable surfaces, not being handles, knobs
or controls, etc. are 70 deg. for metal and 95 deg. for rubber or plastic.

[...]
Thirdly, the supplied cable has a standard IEC_60320 C7/C8 at one end,
but a UK mains plug without a fuse at the other end. The mains plug is
very small and almost clover leaf shaped - barely 5mm larger than the
pins in any direction.

Min. allowed distance from the edge of the plug base to the L & N pins
is 9.5 mm (BS 1363-1:1995, figure 4a).

Is it legal to have a UK plug without a fuse when it feeds a flex? The
plug is marked 250V 10A.

Certainly not. Approval body (BSI, ASTA, etc. marks and the standard
no. (BS 1363(/A)) are also required for legality. Similarly the fuse
must be approved marked BS 1362.

Interestingly, the IEC_60320 C7 plug is optimistically marked 250V 25A
(I doubt it could handle 3A).

The rating is 2.5 A. clearly the decimal point is missing.

This all needs to be drawn to the attention of your local trading
standards dept.

--
Andy