I agreed completely with Scott. A 6 to 9 foot 18AWG cord will handle well in excess of 20A for a short period of time without starting to smoke (heck, it'll handle close to in excess of 60A for a very very short time without bursting into flames--not that it was a good experience finding this out). Point is, the cordage will handle a fault either indefinitely or long enough for the branch circuit breaker to trip provided you are connected to a 15A or 20A branch circuit.
Another data point, you routinely pass more current through the cord when doing the earthing test and that uses more current than the cord is rated. Leave the tester on for awhile and the cord does not really heat up either. What this list needs is a power cord manufacturer or agency safety engineer that does power cords to settle this once and for all! Dan -----Original Message----- From: Scott Lacey [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 7:43 PM To: Gary McInturff Cc: [email protected] Subject: RE: skinny power cords. Gary, I believe the answer is that the power cord rating of 6 or 10 amps is the operating current, at which it will have minimum temperature rise. Under fault conditions it will experience a rather dramatic temperature rise that is still well below the melting temperature of the insulation. The breaker or fuse should clear well before the cord is "cooked" to the point of failure. Scott Lacey ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Michael Garretson: [email protected] Dave Heald [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: No longer online until our new server is brought online and the old messages are imported into the new server.
