On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:16:48 +0100,it is alleged that
spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:

On 31 Jul,
John Rumm wrote:


If you want to fix a problem, find a way to make sure that the earth
terminals on IEC (cold) plugs don't splay and hence interrupt the earth
connectivity to portable appliances. I have seen numerous power leads
fail PAT testing for this.

When I did PAT testing this was something I had to test. This was after some
had been found to fail. I personally never found one that failed for this
reason, but it is possible, Perhaps we used better quality ones, I somehow
doubt it.

I had this issue with a PC (desktop) a few weeks ago. What I figured
had happened was as mentioned elsewhere, it had come partly out and
had sideways force applied. However, this hadn't affected the female
connector, but the chassis male plug, which had its earth pin loosened
and pushed back by maybe 1.5 to 2 mm. Enough to fail to make contact
before the live/neutral. I put it down to poor design, a PCB mount
socket used as chassis mount with the earth tail inside
soldered/heatshrinked to the pcb pin.

--
While theoretically and technically television may be feasible,
commercially and financially it is an impossibility.
- Lee DeForest