Electrical Safety Warning.

[steve2006]

As I work in domestic appliance repair I come across all sorts of dodgy appliances but this has got to be the worst and not only that but some of you may unwittingly have the same dangerous product in your home.

The pictures show a cheap Chinese copy of the lead which is fitted to some laptop chargers, the lead is known as a "Cloverleaf" design as from the end it looks like one.

It has the 3 normal wires i.e. live earth and neutral but the poor quality makes this lead extremely dangerous in many ways which could result in a fire risk and worse still could produce a fatal electric shock situation.

The picture of the plug shows the poor wiring inside it as manufactured, sorry it is a little defocused but it was taken with my mobile camera. You can see strands of the live copper connection splayed out from the terminal post, this could obviously short out and cause a fire.The other things wrong are the wires are not colour coded as they should be for UK wiring so we have no idea which is live or neutral as both wires are black, the earth wire we assume is the grey one.

Also note that the outer covering of the cable has broken where it enters the plug exposing the inner conductors another danagerous situation.

The second picture shows the whole lead, the reason I had this in for repair was due to the fact the charger was "dead" i.e. not working at all so I checked the continuity of the lead and found the live wire was not connected from the plug to the lead end.

There was a small nick in the outer cable covering and once that was peeled ( it peeled off like an orange it was such poor quality) back it was discovered the live wire had completely broken inside the cable, again this is a fire risk as arcing could occur across the break.

The outer insulation was so poor it could be pulled off with just your fingers, on a good quality UK approved lead you would need cutters to strip the cable.

Finally the actual copper conductors inside the wire was around 6-8 strands of low grade copper, totally inadequate for its purpose, this could.result in overheating of the cable with its obvious consequences.This is probably why the live wire brok internally as can be seen in the photograph.

So if you or anyone you know has one of these cheap Chinese laptop power supplies, we have all seen them on fleabay for £6.00 delivered! Check it over it won't be such a bargain if some one loses their life over it, only buy OE replacements from a reputable supplier or the manufacturer.