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Author Topic: Transposed Active and Neutral  (Read 3443 times)

Lyle Williams

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Transposed Active and Neutral
« on: August 22, 2017, 02:42:13 AM »

Well, I finally ended up with some gear with powercons, and in bringing the gear into service found one powercon lead with A and N transposed. (Out of 12 powercon leads tested.)

That makes 13 A/N transpositions I've found now.

4 in saimese xlr/iec
7 in iec leads
1 in iec/iec
1 in powercon

Curiously, I've never found one in an extension lead.  But transpositions are scarily common.  Single pole switches are also common.

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Steve M Smith

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Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #1 on: August 22, 2017, 03:08:13 AM »

Whilst it's not to be encouraged, It's not such a big deal.  Live and Neutral are basically the same inside any piece of equipment other than there being a fuse in line with Live,


Steve.
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Lyle Williams

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Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #2 on: August 22, 2017, 06:37:41 AM »

I agree it isn't "certain death" but so much of our behaviour around electricity assumes that wiring is correct.

It's troubling that this is so prevelant.  Maybe 2% of the cables I have tested are wrong.

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Keith Broughton

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Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #3 on: August 22, 2017, 07:16:44 AM »

If these have been purchased from a supplier, it brings into question the quality control of other wiring products they may sell.
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I don't care enough to be apathetic

Geoff Doane

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Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #4 on: August 22, 2017, 09:10:51 AM »

If these have been purchased from a supplier, it brings into question the quality control of other wiring products they may sell.

Yeah, it's like Van Halen's brown M&Ms.  No big deal on their own, but if they can't get that right, what else might be wrong?

GTD
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Scott Helmke

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Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #5 on: August 22, 2017, 09:57:30 AM »

I agree it isn't "certain death" but so much of our behaviour around electricity assumes that wiring is correct.

It's troubling that this is so prevelant.  Maybe 2% of the cables I have tested are wrong.

About 1% in our shop. We test every cable nowadays. But I first started testing after finding such a cable that caused noise in a mixer.
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Jonathan Johnson

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Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #6 on: August 22, 2017, 02:51:52 PM »

I think that rather than transposing neutral and active (live) (hot), it would be more likely that the three wires would be rotated, so that the ground wire goes to hot, hot goes to neutral, and neutral goes to ground. That could look like a swapped neutral and hot if you were just measuring voltages. To swap hot and neutral on a cordset would likely require crossing the hot and neutral over each other; most cords are designed so that the hot, neutral, and ground wires line up nicely with contacts in the plugs.

However, if you are measuring end-to-end continuity of a cordset and finding that hot and neutral really are flipped, then someone at the manufacturer probably did go to the extra effort to twist around the wires in the plug.
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Stop confusing the issue with facts and logic!

Lyle Williams

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Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #7 on: August 22, 2017, 04:26:25 PM »

If these have been purchased from a supplier, it brings into question the quality control of other wiring products they may sell.

Bought from a range of legit suppliers over the years generally.  When there was an identifiable supplier I provided appropriate feedback.

There was a time before I did 100% testing prior to introduction to service.  The three-pin domestic to IEC leads are impossible to trace - everything comes with one of these "jug" cords and if you don't test the moment you open the box, the parentage of each cable is lost.



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ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Transposed Active and Neutral
« Reply #7 on: August 22, 2017, 04:26:25 PM »


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