On 12/06/2019 20:38, Steve Walker wrote:
On 12/06/2019 02:12, John Rumm wrote:
On 09/06/2019 22:25, Steve Walker wrote:
On 09/06/2019 09:42, dennis@home wrote:
On 08/06/2019 23:29, wrote:
On Saturday, 8 June 2019 15:20:05 UTC+1, Steve WalkerÂ* wrote:
On 08/06/2019 12:46, dennis@home wrote:
On 08/06/2019 11:10, Max Demian wrote:
On 07/06/2019 23:23, Steve Walker wrote:
On 07/06/2019 18:37, Jim GM4DHJ ... wrote:
"Terry Casey" wrote in message
...
In article , briang1
@blueyonder.co.uk says...

Yes and the cable out of the other side. If you look
carefully at
these,
there is normally a flat twistable plate on the bottom
containing the
pins
and one can simply twist it off and twist on one for another
land
entirely,
as the ground is at the bottom in effect they assume all
sockets are
earth
down of course.

I've seen one or two of those but they are rare.

Some of course do not even bother with the earth simply
putting in a
plastic
pin instead.

If the device doesn't require an earth you don't need a metal
pin but the plastic pin has to be present to open the shutters
on a 13A socket.



which is a pain as they seem to break off too easily .....

I've just looked and MK seem to have changed their socket
design to a
more conventional one. They used to use a shutter mechanism that
turned around a pivot point between the live and neutral pins
and had
ramps in opposite directions on the two holes, so they didn't
need an
earth pin to open them.

You could also plug a "continental" two pin in directly without the
need for a shaving adapter.


Risky though as the pin sizes are wrong.
The same is true of plugging them into shaver adapters the pins
are too
small.
You might get away with it or you might overheat the thing and
cause a
fire later when someone plugs an electric fire in.

Indeed.

I have done it with a shaver needing a charge when there has been no
shaver socket or adapter. In that case it is unlikely to cause any
harm
due to the very low charging current. More worrying is that in a
fault
case the very thin flex and the shaver itself is only protected by
the
32A MCB or even 30A fuse for the ring.

SteveW

Pin size is fine, those plugs are on low current loads. Lack of
fusing is more an issue.


NT


The pin size is not fine.

No it is not. However, with the low current drawn by a charging
shaver or toothbrush, overheating due to poor contact is not going to
happen, so it wouldn't matter. Higher loads would.

The problem is less what happens to your appliance with the wrong
plug, and more what happens to the next hapless person along with a
high load appliance and proper plug using a socket which now has
(potentially) damaged contacts.

The likelihood of damage using a shaver plug is pretty low. They are
narrower than the proper pins, so shouldn't splay the contacts; they
have rounded ends, so shouldn't catch on the contacts, even at an angle;
and the current is low, so a poor contact shouldn't cause damage by
heating. Even more so, it is usually something that is only done once or
twice before a proper load or adapter is obtained.

SteveW

That should have read "lead", not "load."