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Range plug to L 14-30

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Kemper Watson:

 One of my venues has a 50 amp 4 wire range plug that Ive been using for years with a small panel broken down into two 20 amp breakers running the two main power amps. I just bought a new Motion Labs rat pack with an L 14 - 30 imput. What would happen if I just made a short tail down to an L 14-30 and plugged it into the Rac Pac. I could probably get someone to swap out the breakers and the plug but was hoping to just make up a cable and be done.. Any one see a real issue ?

TJ (Tom) Cornish:

--- Quote from: Kemper Watson on June 19, 2024, 05:14:19 PM --- One of my venues has a 50 amp 4 wire range plug that Ive been using for years with a small panel broken down into two 20 amp breakers running the two main power amps. I just bought a new Motion Labs rat pack with an L 14 - 30 imput. What would happen if I just made a short tail down to an L 14-30 and plugged it into the Rac Pac. I could probably get someone to swap out the breakers and the plug but was hoping to just make up a cable and be done.. Any one see a real issue ?

--- End quote ---
As long as your venue has a correctly-wired 4-wire 14-50 receptacle, making an adapter for 14-50P -> L14-30R is reasonably safe; there is a theoretical risk of overheating your adapter cable if you have enough over-subscribed demand on your rat pack circuits that are more than 30A/leg continuous draw but not enough to trip the 50A breaker, but that's probably not a likely scenario unless you are trying to max out your circuits with incandescent PAR64s.

You would not want to use any 3-wire receptacle such as a 6-50 as your source power, as you don't want to bond neutral and ground anywhere except at the building service entrance.

Scott Holtzman:

--- Quote from: Kemper Watson on June 19, 2024, 05:14:19 PM --- One of my venues has a 50 amp 4 wire range plug that Ive been using for years with a small panel broken down into two 20 amp breakers running the two main power amps. I just bought a new Motion Labs rat pack with an L 14 - 30 imput. What would happen if I just made a short tail down to an L 14-30 and plugged it into the Rac Pac. I could probably get someone to swap out the breakers and the plug but was hoping to just make up a cable and be done.. Any one see a real issue ?

--- End quote ---


We have tons of those short punts.  That's what I have always heard them called.  Just make sure you are not combining neutrals.  You also want to make sure the overcurrent is covered if the downstream inlet is a lower value.



Kemper Watson:

--- Quote from: Scott Holtzman on June 19, 2024, 11:14:28 PM ---
We have tons of those short punts.  That's what I have always heard them called.  Just make sure you are not combining neutrals.  You also want to make sure the overcurrent is covered if the downstream inlet is a lower value.

--- End quote ---
 
  It's a fairly new properly wired range plug. No bonded neutrals. No more than two power amps running a rig at about 100 db or so. Never came close to popping the 20 amp breakers on my other distro.

Kemper Watson:
 





As long as your venue has a correctly-wired 4-wire 14-50 receptacle, making an adapter for 14-50P -> L14-30R is reasonably safe; there is a theoretical risk of overheating your adapter cable if you have enough over-subscribed demand on your rat pack circuits that are more than 30A/leg continuous draw but not enough to trip the 50A breaker, but that's probably not a likely scenario unless you are trying to max out your circuits with incandescent PAR64s.

You would not want to use any 3-wire receptacle such as a 6-50 as your source power, as you don't want to bond neutral and ground anywhere except at the building service entrance.






Its a 4 wire outlet and the will be two amps running a PA who's level never goes above 100 db. Jazz show. We dont even see yellow lights on the console. LED lights are on two  completely separate L 5-30 outlets..

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