Haha yup. Believe it or not!You don't partake but know its smell well....
CU change pricing?
- Thread starter dabomb3k
- Start date
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There we go then. I'll have a polished walnut one please.
I'm sure
... but I'm not sure that I know these 'in-between' boxes you're talking about. Formaldehyde has an evil, 'pungent', smell. It's actually a gas at room temp/pressure, so you may know it as 'formalin' which is what it's called when dissolved in water. Did you ever dissect dead animals at school - if so, they may well have been preserved in formalin (sometimes phenol). Have you ever drilled/sawn 'Paxolin' - that also usually produces a formaldehyde smell.Kind FRegards, John
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Indeed. I actually suspect that he would be quite hard-pressed to get Bakelite to burn in the same sense that the flimsy Wylex one did, even with his blowtorch. Maybe we're going to go around in a 100-year circle and start using Bakelite CUs again!
BTW, I have a feeling that the later Wylex Standards used a material which, although it looked similar, was not Bakelite.
Kind Regards, John
Never dissected animals at school, missed that by a few years. The best we got was to watch a teacher dissect a lung.I'm sure
Also had to google what Paxolin was, so I doubt I've ever worked with it. I am curious now though
You were lucky; some teachers aren't that dedicated.
He was actually a PE teacher who taught Biology as his 2nd subject, so I think he found it more interesting than most
Ah well. It's probably all phenolics, rather than formalin, these days, anyway
Old, cheap (i.e. not fibreglass) PCBs, matrix boards etc' - although even that is also probably all phenolic ('SRBP') these days.
Kind Regards, John
What I want to know, is why did that NSB board burn up so easily. I seem to remember an experiment in school where a a flame retardant was mixed up, a fiver was painted in it and it was held over a bunson burner without any ill effects. That CU looked like it had no resistance to flame whatsoever.
One NYE I attended a recently wired property, 40A electric heating boiler. Cables (6mm feed and some 1.5 controls cables) had been first fixed comming out the boiler cupboard wall. when the boiler went in, singles in flexi conduit had been used to make the connection to the appliance, the joint consisted of a plastic adaptable box with connector blocks in. 15A connector blocks had been used and I also assume not tightened much. The adaptable box had caught fire and had to be put out by the new homeowner who was luckily in at the time. Half the box was completely melted and drips of hot plastic had started falling on the carpet. I returned next day and ended up fitting a metal adaptable box with DIN rail terminals. I'm not sure that despite my recommendations that the other properties were checked, though I did hear a few months later that a CU melted and had to be swapped
One NYE I attended a recently wired property, 40A electric heating boiler. Cables (6mm feed and some 1.5 controls cables) had been first fixed comming out the boiler cupboard wall. when the boiler went in, singles in flexi conduit had been used to make the connection to the appliance, the joint consisted of a plastic adaptable box with connector blocks in. 15A connector blocks had been used and I also assume not tightened much. The adaptable box had caught fire and had to be put out by the new homeowner who was luckily in at the time. Half the box was completely melted and drips of hot plastic had started falling on the carpet. I returned next day and ended up fitting a metal adaptable box with DIN rail terminals. I'm not sure that despite my recommendations that the other properties were checked, though I did hear a few months later that a CU melted and had to be swapped
I'm not sure I could even get 6mm into a 15A connector block!
True, but in response to a very violent 'ignition source'! I suspect that if Rob tried repeating his experiment with something even remotely similar to the sort of 'fire source' likely to exist within a CU (rather than a blow torch!) he might well struggle to get much in the way of flames out of even the plastic one.
Kind Regards, John
I'll have a look and see if I've got any old wylex fronts in the graveyard. I only normally save the backs to strip the brass and copper out of them. I'll also try a plastic wylex with a glowing wire. I was quite surprised at how well the plastic CU caught fire and kept burning. I had to abandon the test as it was depositing soot all over me and my workshop and the smoke was really noxious.
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I'll tell you what material would be seriously flame retardant: Quebracho!
The bleedin' heart liberal softies have put a stop to that now. Can't even give 'em a tap on the wrist these days. In my day when you got your lung dissected it taught you respect, and you didn't do whatever it was you'd done a second time, that's for sure.
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