ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Power-board/strip quality and general comments

Here are the pictures. Unfortunately the offender was actually made by a rather well-known company and had an OVE mark!



Here's the manufacturer logo:



I recently had problems with another power strip. This one came from a bundle of extension leads and power strips someone wanted to throw away so I know nothing about its history. That was a rather mixed bunch, some decent extension leads in excellent condition and some homebrew versions with conductors squeezed between plug halves, loose screws, overheating etc.
This one was made by Kopp of Germany (or OEM'd for them, it's unclear whether Kopp actually has any production facilities) and sold until about 10 years ago. For household use these strips and matching extension leads are OK but they tended to end up on construction sites where they quickly met a horrible fate - the plugs and trailing sockets are relatively brittle and crushed under the first work boot, only to be "repaired" with paper masking tape. The pins are hollow brass and can tarnish rather badly. This one is bad enough that it didn't conduct electricity any more when I first tried it! I plugged something in and it flat out didn't work! The sockets' earth scrapers are as bad and I don't doubt the contact springs inside the sockets look the same.
It's also only 1 mm2 but the flex is 5 m long.