Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Electrical Safety - Equipment Maintenance

Most stage equipment that uses electricity has a power cord with a (male) plug or (female) receptacle on one or both ends of it. Maintaining those connections is vital to both the operation of the device and the safety of those using it. Below is the back-end of a stage lighting instrument that has the cable strain relief missing, which in-turn allowed the inner wiring to become frayed and short-out to the casing. Here is a cable end plug that was hurredly assembled to get it working for a show, but the cable clamp (strain relief) was never tightened-down to take the stress off of the inner conductors.
Here is a 2P&G cable end that was not properly secured to the outher sheathing of the stage lighting instrument cable, and over time it frayed apart.
The same thing can happen to extension cords, twofers, and just about any other cable connection. When you find these types of equipment damage, the best thing to do is red-tag the equipment as non-usable, and submit it to your repair shop for correction

An ounce of prevention
In general, the root cause of these types of connector failures is due to people yanking on the cable instead of grasping the plug body when they remove them from their mating device. Take care of your equipment and it may not seek revenge by failing at five minutes to eight, or worse yet, shocking you to get your attention.

1 comment:

  1. Being that it is electrical safety month, I want to share a new product that I came across. This product has never been made before, it's the first of it's kind,a fire-prevention outlet. What the fire safety product does is with it's thermal technology, it's able to sense abnormal temperatures in electrical wiring devices. Once the abnormal heat is detected, the outlet de-energizing the circuits involved, and is able to stop potential fires before they can start. Pretty neat product, I know I will be installing them in my home.

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