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#220448 01/16/20 04:35 AM
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dsk Offline OP
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Some years ago I got this adapter. Countries with Schuco standard outlets has this to prvent ungrounded devices to be plugged in where grounding is imprtant, as in bathrooms etc. The scaring thing is that someone suggests to plug in that one on the washing machine cord to prevent the GFCI to trip. cool

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Last edited by dsk; 01/16/20 04:40 AM.
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dsk,
That device almost looks like one of them cheap travel adapters that you can buy from the usual suspects on the Internet.

One thing I really hate about using anything like this, is that they are usually a compromise in not only mechanical strength, but also the connections inside these devices are often not made with the same current-carrying capacity and end up with a sloppy connection at best, which will eventually cause a fire safety hazard.

In my opinion, any sort of adapters should be banned, the world over.
If you don't have the correct socket-outlet or the correct plug, ask yourself why niether of them are present and make the required changes.

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dsk Offline OP
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You are absolutely right in all hences. I got one, and heard the story, so I have tested it on gfci circuit, It does just disconnect the ground wire, and I am not i presses by anything. Here in Norway we use scuko otlets, and old ungrounded plugs do not fit. I live in an "older" house (1989) and rooms without water does only have the old outlets. Usually no problem. So this was just for testing, and for the confirmation to ay No! to a persen wanting to use this on a washing machine.

Last edited by dsk; 03/29/20 12:25 AM. Reason: Spelling
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Good thing I didn't feel that way when we went to New Zealand. I had a NZ adapter to a NEMA 5-15 and a plug strip. It was how we survived. I only took things with us that had wide mouth power supplies (PCs USB chargers etc) and everything worked fine. I doubt my total connected load was ever over an amp or two tho. I am not sure I wanted to buy all that stuff for a 3 week trip. A 5 buck adapter was all I needed.


Greg Fretwell
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Greg,
I had to read your post at least twice, I was wondering how on earth you managed to use your gear here on a 230V system. smile

And yes, you'd get that with them universal devices that work on pretty much 100-300V (I think it is).
The reason I mentioned the whole adapter thing in the first place was that, what used to be EnergySafe here (which is now under WorkSafe/OSH), banned the importation and use of certain types of travel adapters, back in 2010(?)

This was due to people importing cheap appliances that were never meant to run on 230V single phase, buying an adapter and lo and behold, the kitchen/house goes on fire,
mainly because the load current through the said adapters was well outside of their design current.
However, I'm talking about high current appliances like toasters and kettles, although I'm not sure why you'd go through all that bother, when you can buy a decent toaster or kettle here for NZ$20-30, that will work perfectly fine and not go on fire, if you're lucky.

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dsk Offline OP
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What do we trust or not regarding safety and markings?

I have marked with red those institutions where I have generally found good quality, so I usually trust things with those marks. The other ones may be OK, I just have no experience with those.

So the 2 more that is not approval markings: The CE marks.

CE China Export are just that, and almost equal to The CE from Europe. The European CE was ment to be a quality mark, but it is (based on strict rules) just a mark that tells you that the maker states it to be according to regulations.

The "Ground fault remover" has none of these, and the most important, the visual inspection and we always shold do does not tell me about more than medium minus quality. Since I don't want my house or where I am to burn down I would prefer this and equal units to be banned.

When traveling abroad I use to take a power strip frome home and change the plug to the standard in the country I am visiting. Regarding voltage and frequency I have to pick what to bring, usually it is phone, pc and shaver, all those are universal so it is no problem. Sometimes I bring shoe dryer, and that has to be for the right voltage. The wattage are usually of 15 W so it is no big loads.

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Last edited by dsk; 03/30/20 01:45 AM.
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Ah yes, the good old adaptor for using class 0 appliances in rooms with Schuko sockets! They never conformed to any regs because Schuko was purposely designed to prevent the use of class 0 plugs but they were incredibly common back in the day! Germany banned essentially all one-piece multi-way adaptors in 1959, mainly claiming that Schuko sockets couldn't take the mechanical strain of more than one plug. They remained legal in Austria, which was by then moving away from the German VDE regs, introducing the first edition of the new OVE regs in 1962, but I don't know for how long. You can still find them on many flea markets but I rarely see them used any more.

Travel adaptors are very hard to govern as they're often not sold in the country they're to be used in. I try to avoid them completely and have a large collection of home-built adaptors consisting of a local earthed plug, 1 m of flex at least 1 mm2 and a Schuko trailing socket. They're not perfect either though, those with 10 A plugs could be overloaded, at least in theory. In practice, I doubt anyone would carry around a load exceeding 10 A while travelling. I do wish my NEMA 5-15 adaptor had more than 18 AWG! A 18 AWG IEC lead was all I had available though. I didn't even realise that until I cut and stripped it, the outside diametre is roughly equal to H05VV-F 2.5 or at least 1.5!

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Sorry to bring an old thread up again, but I missed the end of this due to being busy at work.
To call a device like this a "Ground Fault Remover", misses the point, although they are sold as this.

What they are is a "Ground Reference Remover", now if you think about that for a second or two, by using this device,
you are now removing the most important electrical protection (aside from a circuit-breaker) available to you.
This device will also not trip any RCD, unless there is some sort of an imbalance between the Phase and Neutral conductors inside the equipment.

So, if the appliance or whatever you plug into it has a direct Earth fault (sure, not a lot of things have metal bodies on them these days), you've lost the one thing that will possibly alert you to the fact that there is a dangerous fault within the equipment.

With respect to these "approvals", with respect to Electrical test equipment, I insist on stuff that at least has a "mark" from VDE, you know that it has been tested adequately.

However, the Chinese did themselves no favours at all, by basically copying a well-known and respected approval mark, with the slightly "different" CE-mark.
This in itself has "cheapened" the whole CE-mark and also the fact that this copying was never really challenged, because the Chinese are still using their version of the mark.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Chinese, but let's be honest here, surely they could have come up with something a
LOT more different than that!

Joined: May 2015
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I hope this isn't too far off-topic...
Originally Posted by Texas_Ranger
I do wish my NEMA 5-15 adaptor had more than 18 AWG! A 18 AWG IEC lead was all I had available though. I didn't even realise that until I cut and stripped it, the outside diametre is roughly equal to H05VV-F 2.5 or at least 1.5!

In vector drawings I've made in my spare time, SJT 18AWGX3C gets an outer diameter of 7.36mm, versus:
7.01mm for H05VV-F3G1.0
8.27mm for H05VV-F3G1.5
10.04mm for H05VV-F3G2.5
However that's not including the fabric lining still common (though by no means universal) in American cords, with which I could see it approaching the diameter of H05VV-F3G1.5 (though probably not 3G2.5).

Or if it's ST 18AWGX3C (though such a heavily-sheathed cord seems an unlikely combination with IEC 60320), that's 8.88mm diameter in my drawing.

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dsk Offline OP
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For the those adapters, I guess they ar made with almost no focus on safety.
Regarding wire sizez, I dug out an old table from befor calculations (PC) was so much used, the electrician just looked in the table and wired after the standard. Melting fuses was still std. at this time.
Here in Norway this worked well.

You may convert from/to AWG here: https://www.changpuak.ch/electronics/calc_15a.php

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