I think not!

http://www.iconeye.com/index.php?op...a-student-radically-improves-the-uk-plug

Who wants to start with the potential flaws?

There was a video demo of this posted earlier, I believe...

An interesting idea; will be interesting to see how something like that holds up to repeated use. I wonder if the red part on the bottom is for the fuse, or a locking mechanism to keep it from folding back up on itself?

I doubt that... BS546 15A (as used in South Africa and India) is considerably bigger as far as I can tell. BS1363 is second though, especially with the utter impossibility of having smaller plugs for appliances that don't require an earth connection.

Yeah the 15 (sometimes now quoted as 16A) plugs used in South Africa are HUGE



To give you a size comparison

Amazingly enough both of those devices are rated 15amps.

The BS546 designers really didn't take any chances !!!



BS1363 and BS546:15Amp beside eachother.

Beautiful design and I am sure the blades are more like 30 amp capable. Funny how our motor starters use NEMA spec for years and as a result are much larger than the Euro Standard starters now accepted in North America. Just about the opposite of the plugs. NEMA Starters and contactors withstand so much more fault current than the smaller Euro ones yet they way overbuild their 15 amp plugs.

I like that folding plug design,I hope it can pass BSA muster.

MikeSF.,

Belive or not in France we been using the NEMA starter for frequent start and stop useage it hold up far much better than IEC contractors can hold up for cost wise we justify it due the cycle life in there.

One way we dealt with IEC is oversize it but some IEC starter/contractors can be rebuiltable not all compared to NEMA is fully rebuildable and can be done in matter of minutes.

Merci.
Marc

Out of cutiosity, I looked up the specs, and according to a friend (I couldn't get the actual specs, so he measured) the pin diameter of a BS546 15A plug matches a 32A CEE industrial plug.

The 2 pin Euro plug with its plastic sleeved 4mm pins is rated at 2.5A. Yet the Italian 2 pin plug with plastic sleeved 4mm pins is rated 10A... and so far I didn't hear anything about common failure (unlike the Swiss 10A plugs with unsleeved 4mm pins prone to melting down cheaper outlets at even a continuous 10A load).

The reason the Europlug is rated 2.5A is quite simple, it is designed to make contact with quite a few designs of socket outlet, most of which are in fact designed to mate with much large 4.8mm diameter 16 amp plugs.

Europlug's pins are bent slightly inwards and somewhat springy to ensure that it makes good contact, but contact is only made on quite a small surface area of the pin, on one side only. Where as the 16A counterpart makes contact on a much wider surface area of the pin.

The Italian 2 pin plug on the other hands is designed to make proper contact with Italian sockets, so it can be safely rated 10A as it's a complete system.

I'm not absolutely sure, at least the combined 10/16A sockets look a bit dubious to me. The openenings for 4mm and 4.8mm pins are so close together I doubt there is much difference in the guts. And then of course there are the sockets that take P11 (10A), P17 (16A) and P30 (Schuko) which have two sets of 4.8mm holes.