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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => AC Power and Grounding => Topic started by: Mike Sokol on September 08, 2016, 11:16:12 AM
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I'm building a new camlock distro and found one of my rental tails with Orange tape on it. Of course, Orange is supposed to be a Wild-Leg Delta connection, but what do I know... So I looked up "official" colors of camlocks and here's what I found. While the US colors are exactly what I expected (Green/White/Black/Red/Blue), the UK colors are completely different. And the UK used to use Black for Neutral, and now it's Blue for Neutral, just like in their IEC cables. Good golly, that could be a real disaster cross connecting camlocks between US and UK gear. But I don't think the UK uses camlocks much, so maybe it's a non-issue.
Any other weirdness I should be on the lookout for?
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Good golly, that could be a real disaster cross connecting camlocks between US and UK gear.
Yet another reason to meter the terminals before plugging in!
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Yet another reason to meter the terminals before plugging in!
I just talked to one of my US buddies who has toured in the UK, and he agrees that it's a bit confusing connecting into UK power with his US distro. He meters everything. He also has the original UK power distro from the band AC-DC here in the states, so a lot of his gear uses C-Form connectors with the blue being neutral. And of course in the US blue is hot. And sometimes in the UK black is neutral. But in 12-volt automotive wiring black is chassis ground/negative. But in all AC power the ground is Green. Except in the UK where ground is Green with a Yellow stripe.
TOO MANY COLORS!!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!
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Green with a yellow stripe provides an additional margin of safety for somebody who is red-green colorblind. (In wire schemes that don't use red.)
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hey
Yeah in the past here in the UK green has always been our earth connection (or stripy green/yellow), but in the past we had the black and red colours for all of our wiring. Very old house wiring will still have this buried in all the walls.
As we became more connected with Europe and standards were applied across the whole area, we adopted Blue for Neutral and Brown for live quite some time ago into common household scale wiring, and it also made it's way into higher power things like industrial system and our show distros.
However you're correct in that we use camlock less commonly. As we have our double voltage (compared to the US) 240v system, we only have to pull half the current to get the same overall power, and so our wiring is generally a little lighter weight (I'm sure most people, certainly anyone who's toured over here, knows this) for the same power delivery as yours.
Rather than each conductor needing to be so big it gets an individual plug/socket as in camlock, ours are all small enough that they can be packed into a single multipin connector, known as cee-form. They're blue if they're just single phase, and red if they're 3 phase, but all three or five pins are in the one connector.
(you'll often see yellow ones too for building sites and industrial work, which work on a "110v system" which is actually centre tapped 2x 55v, considered safer in that environment where damage or outside/wet conditions are more common).
They come in standard sizes of 16, 32, 63 and 125 amps. They have a male and female end, and whether a cable connector or an outlet panel, the power delivery end (female) has a little lid that closes over when not in use as well as recessed pins that are almost impossible to accidentally touch without actually sticking something inside.
Being at 240v, most often a 63 three phase is all that's needed for even a fairly substantial sound system, which will be fed into a distro and split as needed (usually 32a single and triple phases for amp racks, 16a singles for stage power and processing racks etc, and right at the end of the line down to our traditional 13a sockets for stage power for musicians and individual devices etc). Only a big arena or stadium system would need a 125a 3 phase (or one each side of stage to reduce wiring).
Lighting rigs, being a little more power hungry, can have camlocks on show a little more commonly, but even again this is often just done with 125a 3 phase connections.
Various 16a single phase Ceeform connectors:
(http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/351537988990-0-1/s-l1000.jpg)
and a 32a three phase cable (though hard to tell, connectors are about 1.5x the size of the 16a ones, cant be cross connected to another amperage accidentally)
(http://wwep.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/32a-Three-Phase-Cable-for-Hire-from-Worldwide-Event-Productions-600x450.jpg)
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I see these Ceeform connectors used in hotels a lot. The connectors are kind of expensive over here and I think that keeps folks from using their distros and having to rent the hotels stuff. >:(
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Hi All, please correct me if I am incorrect but, To add to what Kevin wrote, as far as I am aware the colours of Cee forms relate to highest possible voltage, ie 110v = yellow, 240v = Blue, 415v = Red. So with 3 phase 5 pin Cee Forms if its rated at 415v between live 1 & 2 it would be Red, but if its 208 between live 1 & 2 (or 2 & 3, 1 & 3...) it would be blue.
In the UK / Europe we almost excessively use Powerlocks instead of Cams (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerlock). I believe camlocks are now no longer legal to use? I have started seeing a lot more powerlock sets being provided in the states.
When I am touring around the world with UK / European power distro's I label my cam locks to (usually 63a 3 phase Cee form) with UK colour coding and labeled Earth, Neutral, live 1 etc... As the US has one colour code, Canada has another & don't get me started on south / central America.
The power request for the last European arena tour I did was,
Sound = 1 x 125a 3 phase Cee form, 1 x 63a 3 phase Cee form
lighting = 4 x 400a powerlocks, 1 x 125a 3 phase Cee form
Rigging = 1 x 125a 3 phase Cee form
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When I am touring around the world with UK / European power distro's I label my cam locks to (usually 63a 3 phase Cee form) with UK colour coding and labeled Earth, Neutral, live 1 etc... As the US has one colour code, Canada has another & don't get me started on south / central America.
The nice thing about standards is there are so many to choose from! ;D
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It gets really fun dealing with industrial power-especially when we import from Europe. They are consistent in that blue = neutral or common, black is a hot or power --at least in cordsets.
Here 24 volt systems typically use blue= +24 VDC, white w/blue stripe as common or negative-but when you get a cordset for a 24 VDC prox, the cordset is blue=common or ground and black is hot-so you connect the blue wire to the white with blue stripe and the black wire to the blue.....but then there is a reason I keep a cheat sheet handy!
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Green with a yellow stripe provides an additional margin of safety for somebody who is red-green colorblind. (In wire schemes that don't use red.)
I have encountered many dirty Camlocks with red and green colors that I absolutely can not tell apart. The newer stuff, particularly when it's new, no problem.
I have gotten many strange reactions from stage hands when I ask which is red and which is green. After I explain it it makes sense (what, I shouldn't ask ?!?).
As always, meter it more than once.
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I have encountered many dirty Camlocks with red and green colors that I absolutely can not tell apart. The newer stuff, particularly when it's new, no problem.
In the interest of correctly hooking up red and green camlocks, here's a basic red-green colorblind test. What numbers do you all see?
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I don't typically allowanyonebesides myself to do any tie ins. Color to color is no issue and everything I deal with is all US standard and of course meter meter meter. However I recently built 2 patch panels to connect racks together the panels are labeled an color coded. However, the cables were just colored (blue, green, purple, orange). I didn't think anything about it. I showed the client and he asked me to label the cables also since they where out of his range of color spectrum (gray, different gray, another gray....). It wouldn't be a bad thing if CAMs had labels G, N, L1(orX), L2 (Y), L3 (Z). Then if you did end out with a European piece of gear you would know to double check everything.
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Well I counted 146 dots of greenish-yellow, is that the right number? Do I just count those, or do I have to count the red dots as well?!?
-Ray
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Well I counted 146 dots of greenish-yellow, is that the right number? Do I just count those, or do I have to count the red dots as well?!?
-Ray
LMAO I'm not completly sure if that was sarcastic or not? Obviously it reads the number 27 made by the green dots?
K
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LMAO I'm not completly sure if that was sarcastic or not? Obviously it reads the number 27 made by the green dots?
K
That might be obvious to YOU.... lolz.
Yeah, I was joking. I DID count the green & yellow dots, though, and if I wasn't trying to get out the door cos I have to be in Seattle by noon, I would count the red ones as well. :D
-Ray
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In the interest of correctly hooking up red and green camlocks, here's a basic red-green colorblind test. What numbers do you all see?
If I can see it, it's too basic and I can read this one. I could never see anything past the first page on a standard test.
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LMAO I'm not completly sure if that was sarcastic or not? Obviously it reads the number 27 made by the green dots?
K
Uhmmmmm..... I was going to count the dots at first, but then I gave up and read 27. ;)
They should make the readable number the actual dot count if they want to be really geeky. :o
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Also in california the high leg(orange) on a 120/240 3 phase service is connected to C phase at the service and B phase in the breaker panels.
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At the DNCC in Philly a few weeks ago there was a very colorful mishmash of Camlocks. Red, blue, yellow, brown, black, green, as well as various tape stripes. I can only assume that stock was taken from a wide variety of sources since there was feeder freakin everywhere. I saw lots of connections with mismatched colors, but everything functioned perfectly best as I saw. So someone did their due diligence...
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At the DNCC in Philly a few weeks ago there was a very colorful mishmash of Camlocks. Red, blue, yellow, brown, black, green, as well as various tape stripes. I can only assume that stock was taken from a wide variety of sources since there was feeder freakin everywhere. I saw lots of connections with mismatched colors, but everything functioned perfectly best as I saw. So someone did their due diligence...
I've done a bunch of gigs for MHA Audio with a lot of UK gear interconnected with US gear. So we had all colors of camlocks feeding big (50KW?) transformers that stepped 120 volts on the US side up to 240 volts on the UK side with Cee-Form outlets. So half of our gear was 120 volts, and the other half was 240 volts. You had to remember which voltage was where or there would be a lot of trouble (smoke). We kept it pretty logical. So if there was a Cee-Form or UK plugboard it was 240 volts. If it was a camlock or Edison outlet it was 120 volts. There were a few times when we broke these rules, but everything was always clearly marked by the shop guys who did a great job prepping and documenting how everything hooked up. And yes, I always metered everything before plugging in a powering up.
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What we colloquially in entertainment technology call C-Forms are now officially known as IEC 60309, and there are variants for every power scheme one is likely to encounter. Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60309). Used in all sensible jurisdictions worldwide. (This excludes New Zealand and Australia as sensible jurisdictions, which have a local and highly stupid 32A connector)
The colour is (mostly!) based on "voltage", and the highest voltage present. So blue plugs are generally 230V single phase, red are 400V three phase (ie 230V phase to neutral, 400V phase to phase). There are some interesting variations, for example, Norway is 240V delta, so three phase four pin blue plugs... Disneyland Paris has the earth monitoring variants, so there is an extra pin, and power isn't supplied until the earth circuit is confirmed as working.
In some places in the world, these connectors are incredibly expensive, in other places, dirt cheap.
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Around here those are called "Pin & Sleeve" connectors and are very prevalent on the oilfeilds
All the supply houses have never heard the term "CE-Form" but they know pin & sleave very well. There's also very old ones (all-metal) around so they've been here a while -and they also have explosion-proof versions apparently that cost an arm&leg so you have to know which ones if you don't want some serious sticker-shock!
http://www.cooperindustries.com/content/public/en/wiring_devices/products/pin_sleeve_devices.html
hey
Yeah in the past here in the UK green has always been our earth connection (or stripy green/yellow), but in the past we had the black and red colours for all of our wiring. Very old house wiring will still have this buried in all the walls.
As we became more connected with Europe and standards were applied across the whole area, we adopted Blue for Neutral and Brown for live quite some time ago into common household scale wiring, and it also made it's way into higher power things like industrial system and our show distros.
However you're correct in that we use camlock less commonly. As we have our double voltage (compared to the US) 240v system, we only have to pull half the current to get the same overall power, and so our wiring is generally a little lighter weight (I'm sure most people, certainly anyone who's toured over here, knows this) for the same power delivery as yours.
Rather than each conductor needing to be so big it gets an individual plug/socket as in camlock, ours are all small enough that they can be packed into a single multipin connector, known as cee-form. They're blue if they're just single phase, and red if they're 3 phase, but all three or five pins are in the one connector.
(you'll often see yellow ones too for building sites and industrial work, which work on a "110v system" which is actually centre tapped 2x 55v, considered safer in that environment where damage or outside/wet conditions are more common).
They come in standard sizes of 16, 32, 63 and 125 amps. They have a male and female end, and whether a cable connector or an outlet panel, the power delivery end (female) has a little lid that closes over when not in use as well as recessed pins that are almost impossible to accidentally touch without actually sticking something inside.
Being at 240v, most often a 63 three phase is all that's needed for even a fairly substantial sound system, which will be fed into a distro and split as needed (usually 32a single and triple phases for amp racks, 16a singles for stage power and processing racks etc, and right at the end of the line down to our traditional 13a sockets for stage power for musicians and individual devices etc). Only a big arena or stadium system would need a 125a 3 phase (or one each side of stage to reduce wiring).
Lighting rigs, being a little more power hungry, can have camlocks on show a little more commonly, but even again this is often just done with 125a 3 phase connections.
Various 16a single phase Ceeform connectors:
(http://i.ebayimg.com/images/i/351537988990-0-1/s-l1000.jpg)
and a 32a three phase cable (though hard to tell, connectors are about 1.5x the size of the 16a ones, cant be cross connected to another amperage accidentally)
(http://wwep.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/32a-Three-Phase-Cable-for-Hire-from-Worldwide-Event-Productions-600x450.jpg)
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Not all pin and sleeve connectors in the US are pin compatible with IEC 309 (Cee) spec though anything relatively new should be. You see them a lot in convention and meeting space and some newer multi purpose rooms. In Euro/UK we use Cee down to the branch circuits for the plug boards. In international entertainment, including the US, it's known as a Cee. If you call it a pin and sleeve most won't know what you are talking about. It doesn't matter what other industries call them, roadies know them as Cee or Ceeform just as you wouldn't call a cam loc a "single pole locking connector".
In Euro/UK you won't find cams or NEMA style twist locks unless someone from the US brings them over. When we do bring gear over typically we tap a US distro into a transformer (though in some cases you could use a genset). I've taken mon rigs and backline that that was universal voltage with Brit or Euro plugs and rented or had the venue/promoter provide branch distro.
As was posted earlier, you won't find cams over there. They use powerlocs. I've done arena tours where we provided a pair of 125 amp Cee, no power tap or bare tails needed and theater/club tours a 63 amp Cee was plenty. On really big gigs or if you need more current (squints, for example) you'll get powerloc to a distro that will break it out to Cee. The topology of the Euro/UK systems are better than the US in that there is standardization from the mains to the branch distribution level. There is a difference in plug boards but rack connections are typically a 16 amp Cee, in some cases a 32 amp Cee. Compare that with the mismatch of NEMA twists over here and it's a much more universal system.
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The "highly stupid" Australian connectors are Clipsal 56 series:
http://updates.clipsal.com/ClipsalOnline/Files/Brochures/I0000112.pdf
They are actually really well made, and I like them more than the IEC ones. Not being standardised with the rest of the world is a bummer though.
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The "highly stupid" Australian connectors are Clipsal 56 series:
That's not a false statement, but it isn't a concise statement: the highly stupid (note lack of quotation marks) connectors are just one type of connector offered in the 56 series range: You can get C-Forms in the 56 series too, for example here's a 56 series 16A C-Form (http://www.pdl.co.nz/product-details.aspx?rcat=products&catid=881&id=565).
For some reason, our Antipodean countries seem entirely able to use the 63A C-Form (sorry - IEC 60309 connector, no electrician here knows what a CeeForm is), and 16A C-Forms, but for 32A we have the stupid connectors. Or at least, we have the stupid connectors in many places. In some other places there are 32A C-Forms, so you need a jumper cable to plug your dimmer with the stupid connector into the sensible C-Form.
Hateful things.
Perhaps the worst feature of them is that unlike C-Forms, they can't be used by untrained personnel. Most folks can figure out a C-Form, and other than the odd scream from the trapped finger as they go through the learning experience during the demate, folks are generally able to mate and use them safely without a training course. The stupid connectors require the screw thread to be done up tightly to ensure the pins mate correctly, or otherwise they don't mate solidly, and you get melted connectors. And once the socket is a bit melted, its all downhill from there. So a socket used once by an untrained person can doom the socket to replacement. Which isn't good when you turn up for the gig on a Saturday and someone rogered the socket on the Friday and said nothing about it (or didn't notice the damage). Out of hours electricians are not cheap, and relies on the guy having the right connector in the truck.
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Canada has another
No we don't....we have the same color code as the US for 120/208v Wye
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No we don't....we have the same color code as the US for 120/208v Wye
Maybe I've just come across old labelling? Do you know of an older colour code?
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Maybe I've just come across old labelling? Do you know of an older colour code?
Not in the last 25 years.
The only difference is the colour sequence of the hot phases. Some places are red, black, blue instead of black, red, blue.
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Not in the last 25 years.
The only difference is the colour sequence of the hot phases. Some places are red, black, blue instead of black, red, blue.
Written inside the 1200 amp switch at our now-decomissioned arena - "Black Red Blue - get a fucking clue." I wasn't working there when that was originally written so I don't know what circumstance led an electrician to put it there.
That said, I was told that in Canada the follow spotlight color boomerang is loaded with frame 1 the furthest from the operator, frame 6 the closest... which is opposite of how I was taught (in the USA) 30 years ago. Any truth to that? /swerve
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That's not a false statement, but it isn't a concise statement: the highly stupid (note lack of quotation marks) connectors are just one type of connector offered in the 56 series range: You can get C-Forms in the 56 series too, for example here's a 56 series 16A C-Form (http://www.pdl.co.nz/product-details.aspx?rcat=products&catid=881&id=565).
For some reason, our Antipodean countries seem entirely able to use the 63A C-Form (sorry - IEC 60309 connector, no electrician here knows what a CeeForm is), and 16A C-Forms, but for 32A we have the stupid connectors. Or at least, we have the stupid connectors in many places. In some other places there are 32A C-Forms, so you need a jumper cable to plug your dimmer with the stupid connector into the sensible C-Form.
Hateful things.
Perhaps the worst feature of them is that unlike C-Forms, they can't be used by untrained personnel. Most folks can figure out a C-Form, and other than the odd scream from the trapped finger as they go through the learning experience during the demate, folks are generally able to mate and use them safely without a training course. The stupid connectors require the screw thread to be done up tightly to ensure the pins mate correctly, or otherwise they don't mate solidly, and you get melted connectors. And once the socket is a bit melted, its all downhill from there. So a socket used once by an untrained person can doom the socket to replacement. Which isn't good when you turn up for the gig on a Saturday and someone rogered the socket on the Friday and said nothing about it (or didn't notice the damage). Out of hours electricians are not cheap, and relies on the guy having the right connector in the truck.
They'd need to be a long way out before they arced. While my experience with these is not stage related, we have many hundreds of these and I can't recall ever having heard of damage.
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I've done a bunch of gigs for MHA Audio with a lot of UK gear interconnected with US gear. So we had all colors of camlocks feeding big (50KW?) transformers that stepped 120 volts on the US side up to 240 volts on the UK side with Cee-Form outlets. So half of our gear was 120 volts, and the other half was 240 volts. You had to remember which voltage was where or there would be a lot of trouble (smoke). We kept it pretty logical. So if there was a Cee-Form or UK plugboard it was 240 volts. If it was a camlock or Edison outlet it was 120 volts. There were a few times when we broke these rules, but everything was always clearly marked by the shop guys who did a great job prepping and documenting how everything hooked up. And yes, I always metered everything before plugging in a powering up.
I remember well many years providing a second set of consoles for a festival MHA did at Merriweather Post. The 3 giant transformers and all the C-Form and and and. Basically the only thing that was 120V was the PM4000 out front and the backline power. It was quite an education.
IIRC, there were something on the order of 96 of those wonderful MHA big square boxes. Not a driver in the rig over 8 inches and low end for days. Good times....
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The first PA company I worked for in the early 80s bought a used 48 box M4 Hill rig from Mike Scarfe, consoles, wedges, rigging, the whole bit. It had three of those big transformer, one hot leg to each and a three way Y for neutral and ground. The xformers had 220 outs for the amps and also 120 US outs for processing, backline, etc. If you were at mon beach and touched between one of the amp racks and one of the 120 racks it was possible to get zapped. Good times...
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I remember well many years providing a second set of consoles for a festival MHA did at Merriweather Post. The 3 giant transformers and all the C-Form and and and. Basically the only thing that was 120V was the PM4000 out front and the backline power. It was quite an education.
IIRC, there were something on the order of 96 of those wonderful MHA big square boxes. Not a driver in the rig over 8 inches and low end for days. Good times....
That's the same MHA speaker system I've used many times so I can describe it. Those were the original M6 cabinets designed and built by Malcolm Hill, which were used by the band AC-DC for a bunch of tours. Each cabinet had 6 Tannoy 10" woofers, 2 Tannoy 10" dual mid/concentrics, plus a 2" RH horn and driver. Each of these "wardrobe" cabs weighed over 300 lbs, and were tri-amped with Chameleon 3KW amps powered by 240 volts from those big 120-to-240 volt step-up transformers and C-Form wiring. IIRC we usually took around 60 of those M6 cabinets to Merriweather Post Pavilion. I was the house engineer for that rig at MPP for a good many summers in the late 80's through the early 90's, so it's very possible you met me there. Small world...
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Everything about Malcolm Hill rigs was different. Mic preamps in a rack on stage, with line level audio going back to the desk. No preamp level remote control. The excellent Hill power amps. The Hill mixers. The combo speaker boxes. I mixed several times on the full MH rig with the 3 series speakers, and always enjoyed it. For a while there was a resident Hill rig in the Marquee (Mk 2 I think) and it was nice being able to walk up to a system that just worked.
The Hill monitor mixer had 8 faders per channel, rather than the knobs so prevalent in other monitor boards.
Malcolm Hill. A man with a vision, albeit a vision a bit different to others, and an attitude.
AC/DC played some festival back in the day in the UK, full MH rig, and it rained, and all the cones got wet. Despite requests to a support band BE to keep it down, he gave it welly, and there were ripped cones to hell and back. Apparently there was not a lot of PA left working by the time AC/DC took the stage.
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Written inside the 1200 amp switch at our now-decomissioned arena - "Black Red Blue - get a fucking clue." I wasn't working there when that was originally written so I don't know what circumstance led an electrician to put it there.
That said, I was told that in Canada the follow spotlight color boomerang is loaded with frame 1 the furthest from the operator, frame 6 the closest... which is opposite of how I was taught (in the USA) 30 years ago. Any truth to that? /swerve
I will have to ask one of my lampy pals.
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That's the same MHA speaker system I've used many times so I can describe it. Those were the original M6 cabinets designed and built by Malcolm Hill, which were used by the band AC-DC for a bunch of tours. Each cabinet had 6 Tannoy 10" woofers, 2 Tannoy 10" dual mid/concentrics, plus a 2" RH horn and driver. Each of these "wardrobe" cabs weighed over 300 lbs, and were tri-amped with Chameleon 3KW amps powered by 240 volts from those big 120-to-240 volt step-up transformers and C-Form wiring. IIRC we usually took around 60 of those M6 cabinets to Merriweather Post Pavilion. I was the house engineer for that rig at MPP for a good many summers in the late 80's through the early 90's, so it's very possible you met me there. Small world...
I always say 8" drivers when I KNOW they're 10" drivers.
Thanks for the detailed rundown.
Oh, and this gig was for Earth Day. Don't ask me what year but I know Toad the Wet Sprocket and Collective soul were on the bill. 😀