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What is a Portable Appliance |
Question: Answer:
Missing screws as shown here on the Earth can result in a loose or unconnected Earth as shown in this plug found. Should the class 1 appliance develop a fault with Live, the metal casing of the appliance could become Live and deadly, electrocuting anybody who touches that appliance. Should the same happen with the Live wire, then arcing could occur causing charring, and even fire as you will see in a later example.
This plug was removed from a customers site and was being used on an appliance. The user of this appliance had put a little piece of electrical tape partially over the hole. This could have very easily resulted in electrocution, burns and even death each time the user disconnected of connected the plug from/to the mains socket.
This gives an example of what to look for on any appliance or plug. The brown staining around the black hole on the plug shows an example of heat damage and is most commonly seen on extension blocks such as the ones you may find under your computer desk. Anything found with these marks should be decomissioned and taken out of service immediately.
This is the inside view of the same plug. You can clearly see the burnt insides caused by arcing of electricity between the live wire and the live connector block. This was caused due to either the live wire being too short and coming loose, or more commonly because the live wire had been stripped too much leaving only a couple of strands of the copper core to be fixed into the connector block causing it too break under use.
This customer was extremely lucky that a fire hadn't started and destroyed his business or even somebodies life. Note: This same plug was inspected and checked the year before by an electrician whom was not
properly qualified to carry out Combined Inspection and Testing of Portable Appliances. Future Images will show one or more of the following signs to demonstrate the risks in each particular failure:
The arcing that occurs when the socket does not tightly grip the plugs' pin occurs at very high temperatures causing burning and melting of the surrounding materials. As you can see in the picture below, the heat has caused the insulation around the plugs' pin to melt, also causing a risk of electrocution.
This was the plug removed from the above socket.
Wiring more than one appliance into a single plug is a dangerous way to avoid buying a multiple-gang extension. The plug becomes too cramped, will draw too much current and as is visible here, will most likely damage the inner wires as can be seen above on the earth (yellow/green) and live/phase (brown). This can lead to any number or problems, usually resulting in either fire, or electrocution.
This damaged flex was originally wound in brown packaging tape. If a cable has been damaged
then no matter what kind of tape, be it electrical insulating tape, or packing tape, it is not safe. The above item
was found in an existing business that had just been bought by a new owner. Luckily, this appliance was never switched
on, even thought it could have been used by customers everyday.
Using equipment in this state is a sure fire way to causing fire, injury & death.
Here is a classic example of where a manufacturer has shipped appliances which have a design-fault in them.
This example is an LCD Flat Screen Monitor which is overheating and resulted in the melting of the appliances casing. This had occured
to several same model PC Monitors within this business. Mistakes even happen during the manufacturing process. |
