Just saw an identical loaded gun today. It was on a wet scrubber, and when I pointed it out to the employer... he said... there wasn't ever a ground prong on that plug.

I felt embarassed at my ignorance... I guess they just put those holes in the plugs to trick us dumb and dumber inspector types that ask too many questions.

Sometimes I blame the maker of the plug for stuff like that. I've used those molded plugs where, if the ground prong was bent a little more than once in its life, it just broke off and fell out.

Exactly, Jim.

I see missing ground pins on the orange "heavy duty" extension cords for the vacuum cleaners used by the cleaning staff here at work.

The ground pin is a little tube, crimped at the end. They break off quite easily. In fact here at work, last week I found one of those pins dangling in the light socket here in my room!!

Usually just better to snip that piece of garbage off and install a REAL cap.

My wife broke her foot, and as a result was using the little "service chairs" (power carts) at a local grocery store. This one had an attached, auto-retracting cord on the back. Guess what? Except for the color, it looked just like your pic.

This store wasn;t so bad - the carts were kept inside. I've seen missing ground pins on recharging carts where they're kept in the entryway.... during the rain... with the resulting puddles...

I'm just glad I've never had to do "the paramedic thing" after seeing someone get zapped by one (crossing fingers)

I have an old flat ribbon extension cord that recently lost its ground pin off its cap. Replaced it only to find that the ground wire (middle wire of the 3 wire ribbon) was broken at several spots thruout its 100 foot length. The cord was too useful for light loads (powers the boombox while raking leaves and such) to toss, so both ends got 2 prong plug/sockets.
The old ground wire was abandoned (snipped short to avoid contact with anything inside the plugs).

When I was in 1st grade, my teacher had a 100ft, 12AWG extension cord that she used for a lot of things. One day she unplugged it from the Wiremold Raceway Outlet, and, SNAP!! The ground pin fell out of the plug, hit the hot and grounded prongs, andfell to the floor.

was the plug mounted ground up or down in that situation?

I'll bet everyone who wouldn't be caught within three blocks of that plug drives a car more than 40 miles a week.

I know I'm gonna catch it for that and so be it.

But check some statistics and let me have it either way.

Huh?

Sorry Joe, but this is an approved piece of electrical equipment. The prongs are polarized (one is larger than the other). It probably goes to a unit that has double insulation, which of course does not require a ground connection.

The lack of an actual elecrtrical connection for the ground plug is the clue. the mold used for making this plug can be used for either a grounded or a non-grounded plug.

Of course it could be a bad plug, but I don't think so.

Rick Miell

Mxslick,

Maybe it's a silly post. But my point is it seems rather stupid to me that people go around loosing control over this kind of thing while there are, in fact, things more worthy of our attention.

I know it's an electrical forum. But "Russian roulette"?

Rick Miell:

Rick are you sure the pins are polarized and its just not the fact that they apper to be bent that makes you think they are polarized?

For the record, I've also seen a lot of Chinese extension cords and cordsets sold with polarized AND grounded three-pin plugs. Maybe as a double-protection kind of thing? Keeps the plug polarized even if the ground pin breaks off...

I've never seen non-grounded 2-pin only plugs look like that. All the molded two-pin plugs I've always run across are flat things that look like:

You can be sure that this was an extension cord supplied for use during a seminar and was not what you think or assume it is!

I have many images that are similar.

The lost EGC could mean death to the uninformed, even if they are scholars in the electrical sciences, mslick you said it

Huh?

I apologize for the double post, my computer stopped responding, and it came up as two posts after I restarted it. The Wiremold receptacle was mounted horizontally, it was one of those strip receptacles.

Plugmold?