My wife's family is from Brazil and we are planning to bring a panini (sandwich) maker from the U.S. In the part of Brazil where her family lives, the electric system is on basically the same standard as the U.S. (110 volt, 60 Hz, compared to 120 volt, 60 Hz U.S. standard). The only difference is the lack of grounding, and often outlets are not polarized either. They use hybrid outlets that accept both Type A ungrounded NEMA plugs and Type C Europlugs.
This particular appliance is equipped with a 3-prong NEMA plug. If we bypass the ground and polarity with an adaptor, I assume that there would be no additional safety hazard, because the chassis would have been wired to the ground prong (as opposed to a 2-wire polarized design where the chassis is sometimes wired to the neutral line, and reversed polarity could be deadly). Ungrounded, the metal chassis on this sandwich maker should essentially be isolated (in the absence of a fault condition.)
Does anyone see any issue with bringing this appliance? Keep in mind that we can just as easily buy one there (for 5x as much) and it will have a 2-wire unpolarized Europlug. I can't imagine that buying an appliance from there would give us any extra measure of safety over just bypassing the ground on a U.S. appliance.
Last edited by newsgraphics; 11/29/09 10:02 AM.
