You need this: http://www.360electrical.com/index-3.html or this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/77e6/ or this: http://www.x-tremegeek.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?ProductID=4762 All of the above were noticed at Boing-Boing, A Dictionary of Wonderful Things: http://www.boingboing.net/
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Price, Ed Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 8:04 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Power Plug Blade Configuration I recently bought a little Radio Shack wallwart power supply, equipped with two parallel-blade AC power terminals (with no ground blade) and a 6 VDC output wire pair. As you would expect, one of the blades is slightly wider than the other (implying that this is the neutral or return line), conforming to the convention of the typical NEMA 15 Amp female power receptacle. Since the AC power blades are located near one edge of the wallwart, you can plug the wallwart into a receptacle and the bulk of the wallwart body hangs to one side of the receptacle. Unfortunately, when you try to plug in a second wallwart, the bulk of the wallwart body prevents you from plugging it in, and the larger AC power blade prevents you from facing this second wallwart opposite the first one. My question is, why does this appliance have a polarized blade power connector? I am assuming that the input power pins go directly to the primary of a transformer, so why should we worry about which side is "high" or "return"? Could wallwarts be designed using identical power blades, allowing the option of a 180-degree rotation installation? ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: [email protected] David Heald: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc

