I was looking through the Leviton catalog and was looking at 50 amp
straight bladed plugs and matching receptacles. I was just curious how
much of a safety factor is built into these and how many amp they would
actually handle. Just curious how many amps that they could handle for
extended times and also intermittently. There were also 60 amp straight
bladed plugs but it looks like they were all 3 pole with ground. Why no
60 amp 2 pole with ground? Any suggestions greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Steve

From years of experience let me say this. Most plugs are worthless at
continuous rated service and right along with this most plugs are junk.
There are some good ones but to be safe never count on more than 50%
using rating. Especially for continuous service. The best of them fit
well and this is apparent when you use them. Along with all this you
need good receptacles and preferably the same barnd. Hubbell and
better. Twice the money almost everytime. For 50 Amps I would uese 100
Amp rated plugs and if not the largest rating you can afford and have
space for. Especially for motors and other inductive loads.

Bob AZ

Just thought I'd chime in and support Bob's thinking. Go someplace
where such a plug/receptacle is in use and feel it. You will most
likely note that it's already getting hot. And age doesn't make things
better!!!!!

Pete Stanaitis
-------------------


Bob AZ wrote:
From years of experience let me say this. Most plugs are worthless at
continuous rated service and right along with this most plugs are junk.
There are some good ones but to be safe never count on more than 50%
using rating. Especially for continuous service. The best of them fit
well and this is apparent when you use them. Along with all this you
need good receptacles and preferably the same barnd. Hubbell and
better. Twice the money almost everytime. For 50 Amps I would uese 100
Amp rated plugs and if not the largest rating you can afford and have
space for. Especially for motors and other inductive loads.

Bob AZ

I think you guys are absolutely bonkers on this one. If they underbuilt
plugs so they got hot and started a fire, they would get their asses sued off.

Grant

spaco wrote:

Just thought I'd chime in and support Bob's thinking. Go someplace
where such a plug/receptacle is in use and feel it. You will most
likely note that it's already getting hot. And age doesn't make things
better!!!!!

Pete Stanaitis
-------------------


Bob AZ wrote:

From years of experience let me say this. Most plugs are worthless at

continuous rated service and right along with this most plugs are junk.
There are some good ones but to be safe never count on more than 50%
using rating. Especially for continuous service. The best of them fit
well and this is apparent when you use them. Along with all this you
need good receptacles and preferably the same barnd. Hubbell and
better. Twice the money almost everytime. For 50 Amps I would uese 100
Amp rated plugs and if not the largest rating you can afford and have
space for. Especially for motors and other inductive loads.

Bob AZ

In article ,
Grant Erwin wrote:

I think you guys are absolutely bonkers on this one. If they underbuilt
plugs so they got hot and started a fire, they would get their asses sued off.

Probably true. But they certainly do underbuild them so they get hot at
full load, based on touching plugs that have been run at full load for
several hours or longer. Not flaming, but not cool, either. And that
means that they are adding voltage drop & power loss you could do
without to the circuit. ie, if, as will tend to be the case on a cost &
lawyer-driven basis, the plug is just good enough to not catch fire at
full load, it can still get plenty hot.

Cleaning the blades on the plug can also help, depending how cruddy
those are. Cleaning the socket contacts is a bit trickier, and can have
detrimental side effects.

On Wed, 25 May 2005 17:13:09 -0700, Grant Erwin
wrote:

I think you guys are absolutely bonkers on this one. If they underbuilt
plugs so they got hot and started a fire, they would get their asses sued off.

Grant

I use the typical 50 amp dryer/stove 3 bladed connectors on both my
big welders. Even after running long beads with 5/16 rod at 150 or
more amps..it takes a rather long time for them to start heating to
anything beyond warm

Gunner


spaco wrote:

Just thought I'd chime in and support Bob's thinking. Go someplace
where such a plug/receptacle is in use and feel it. You will most
likely note that it's already getting hot. And age doesn't make things
better!!!!!

Pete Stanaitis
-------------------


Bob AZ wrote:

From years of experience let me say this. Most plugs are worthless at

continuous rated service and right along with this most plugs are junk.
There are some good ones but to be safe never count on more than 50%
using rating. Especially for continuous service. The best of them fit
well and this is apparent when you use them. Along with all this you
need good receptacles and preferably the same barnd. Hubbell and
better. Twice the money almost everytime. For 50 Amps I would uese 100
Amp rated plugs and if not the largest rating you can afford and have
space for. Especially for motors and other inductive loads.

Bob AZ


"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

On Thu, 26 May 2005 00:27:14 GMT, Ecnerwal
wrote:

Probably true. But they certainly do underbuild them so they get hot at
full load, based on touching plugs that have been run at full load for
several hours or longer. Not flaming, but not cool, either.

Unless you are running a wire feeder with 1/16" wire at big amps..its
unlikely you are going to burn one out.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner

My experience has been that the weakest link in that area is a crappy
socket. A lot of the cheaper ones use only the edge of the flat metal for
contact on the plug (male) blade. Causes a lot of overheating, which makes
the already poor contact even worse. A good socket will contact the entire
width of the blade. Hubbell twist-locks are the way to go for higher
current use, but at $20 - $30 each, not too attractive. As with Gunner's
comment, 50A range plugs have served me quite well, even at full rated
current.

Joe

Bob AZ wrote:

From years of experience let me say this. Most plugs are worthless at
continuous rated service and right along with this most plugs are junk.
There are some good ones but to be safe never count on more than 50%
using rating. Especially for continuous service. The best of them fit
well and this is apparent when you use them. Along with all this you
need good receptacles and preferably the same barnd. Hubbell and
better. Twice the money almost everytime. For 50 Amps I would uese 100
Amp rated plugs and if not the largest rating you can afford and have
space for. Especially for motors and other inductive loads.

Bob AZ

Let's remember that the 150 Amp welder is not doing 150 Amps at the
input where it is plugged in. The 150 Amps is the output at
considerably lower voltage.

Nominally the 50 Amp oven/stove connector/plug is perhaps drawing 20
amps about 8KW which is 4 burners on my stove. And the stove/oven load
is resistive. Not inductive as welders are.

Bob AZ

Grant Erwin wrote:
spaco wrote:

Just thought I'd chime in and support Bob's thinking. Go someplace
where such a plug/receptacle is in use and feel it. You will most
likely note that it's already getting hot. And age doesn't make
things better!!!!!

Pete Stanaitis
-------------------

I think you guys are absolutely bonkers on this one. If they
underbuilt plugs so they got hot and started a fire, they would get
their asses sued off.

Grant

I've certainly noticed that plugs on high-powered devices get warm.
Within the last year I've found two plugs (one on an electric fire, one
on a hot air gun) which have got alarmingly hot. When I opened them up I
found that the neutral screw terminal was several turns loose. My father
wired both these plugs 15 or 20 years ago and he's convinced that the
screws were originally tight. It seems that the warming had slowly
allowed the screws to loosen.

Chris

To get over 50 amp device in a plug or receptacle, you are going to have to
use a pin and sleeve style industrial device. We just jumped into the few
hundred dollar range now. Why not just hard wire it to a fused disconnect
switch and be done with it?


"Bob AZ" wrote in message
ups.com...
From years of experience let me say this. Most plugs are worthless at
continuous rated service and right along with this most plugs are junk.
There are some good ones but to be safe never count on more than 50%
using rating. Especially for continuous service. The best of them fit
well and this is apparent when you use them. Along with all this you
need good receptacles and preferably the same barnd. Hubbell and
better. Twice the money almost everytime. For 50 Amps I would uese 100
Amp rated plugs and if not the largest rating you can afford and have
space for. Especially for motors and other inductive loads.

Bob AZ

Grady wrote:
To get over 50 amp device in a plug or receptacle, you are going to have to
use a pin and sleeve style industrial device. We just jumped into the few
hundred dollar range now. Why not just hard wire it to a fused disconnect
switch and be done with it?


"Bob AZ" wrote in message
ups.com...

From years of experience let me say this. Most plugs are worthless at
continuous rated service and right along with this most plugs are junk.
There are some good ones but to be safe never count on more than 50%
using rating. Especially for continuous service. The best of them fit
well and this is apparent when you use them. Along with all this you
need good receptacles and preferably the same barnd. Hubbell and
better. Twice the money almost everytime. For 50 Amps I would uese 100
Amp rated plugs and if not the largest rating you can afford and have
space for. Especially for motors and other inductive loads.

Bob AZ




I've used 300 Amp in line Hubble three phase 5 wire connectors. You have to
eat good to carry more than one around. Lots of copper!
One end was hard wired into the panel (code).
(That was 300 amps per leg!) - the wire - It was a troubling concept but it
taught us to be different designers.

Martin

--
Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lion's Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH, NRA Life
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----

In article ,
Gunner wrote:
On Wed, 25 May 2005 17:13:09 -0700, Grant Erwin
wrote:

I think you guys are absolutely bonkers on this one. If they underbuilt
plugs so they got hot and started a fire, they would get their asses sued off.

Grant

I use the typical 50 amp dryer/stove 3 bladed connectors on both my
big welders. Even after running long beads with 5/16 rod at 150 or
more amps..it takes a rather long time for them to start heating to
anything beyond warm

Are you using those plugs on the power input side, or on the
connections to the welding rod? 150 amps to the rod is *not* going to
draw 150 amps from the wall.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---