kreed Inscribed thus:
Finally another fault I found recently. When cutting an IEC lead to
hard wire it into a terminal block inside a cabinet, found that there
was no earth wire for about 8" inside the cord, but just a hole next
to the other 2 wires where it should have been. IT could not have
been removed at any stage after manufacture, as the outer insulation
was intact with no cuts or other damage visible. Also it was missing
in the middle of the cable, not at an end.
Were lucky to have cut it in the right place or this might not have
ever been discovered. I have never in nearly 40 years ever seen this
before in any 3 core flex cable that I have worked with.
This was a Japanese made cord probably of 1980s vintage, very light
grey in colour.
Odd this should come up ! I've just replaced the mains lead on an 800W
bench circular saw. Intermittent fuse blowing. Turns out that the
mains lead has had the live and earth wires migrate through the
insulation where the lead had been folded when the saw was originally
packaged.
I admit that I had to cut the cable in short chunks to actually find
where it was shorting. At each bend in the cable the two conductors
had migrated through the insulation.
I've put a new mains lead on and all is fine now. The original lead was
very hard, stiff plastic, not soft and flexible like you would expect.
I also found that the blue insulation was bonded with the outer jacket
and the brown live insulation, making it impossible to strip the
insulation from just one wire without damaging the others.