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I saw a guy in an electrical shop in Cork spending >€100 on 3 IEC power cables with sheilded cables for his sensitive audio equipment.

I asked him did he also intend to sheild the entire supply cable back to the xformer and perhaps from there back to the powerstation?

.... people sometimes make me wonder if they should be allowed to wire anything! Never mind tinning the cables for that professional look. Also, you'd want to be careful when suggesting "tinning" anything in Cork, it could be misinterpreted as "thinning" with warm and sparky results!

Watered down Guinness? Wouldn't that be enough to start another revolution there?

In the British "Television" magazine; formerly "Practical Television", only a few years ago the loose screw topic was discussed. When a set was brought in for repair and the (UK 13A) plug was checked for correct fuse and wiring it was often found the neutral screw was loose. Sometimes loose enough to prevent connection. The mystery was never officially solved; the closest plausible explanation was that the neutral pin was free to move about as the plug was inserted and withdrawn from the socket. The live pin wasn't as it was riveted to the fuse holder and therefore mechanically isolated.
When I moved into my house I checked every switch and GPO and found the neutral screw in one of the kitchen GPO's had never been tightened but the fibreglass insulation in the wall had kept the wire pressed in.

Aussie, I recall that article too, I thought it seemed to be the most likely. Another that occurred to me (but wouldn't be applicable to low load appliances) would be the heating effect from the pins themselves in older sockets. The neutral pin would conduct the heat directly to the (tinned) wire, whereas the live would be thermally isolated by the fuse.

It depends upon the design of the plug. In general, the neutral pin should be held in place by the plug top, although admittedly there will be some slight movement. Some of the older designs (notably the Rolls-Royce of plugs -- MK) had the pins securely fixed to the plug anyway.




[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 01-04-2006).]

There must be something about the neutrals though. A buddy of mine on my summer job insisted in at least 75% of the spöice failures he had seen the neutral (of a single phase system) had failed and in most cases the neutral fuses blow and not the phase ones.

Perosnally I haven't experienced that many failures, regarding the fuses I can say at home usually one or the other fuse blows, without any significance. Or they blow both at once.