On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 08:49:25PM +0000, Densler, Vernon R (IT Solutions) wrote: > I was told that my power cord on my boat was actually on fire between the 50 > to > 30 amp adapter and the 30 amp cord. Anyone have any idea what could cause > something like this?
Sure - a bad (i.e., high-resistance) connection. > Trying to figure out why there of all places and if > something on the boat was able to draw enough current to cause something like > that. The rest of the cord is fine and it has been plugged in and running > fine > for almost a year. Not so much a case of something on the boat drawing enough current as a combination of even relatively low current and too-small of a wire cross-section. A wire coming loose from its terminal, the terminal itself cracking at its base, the wire being run over by a dock cart and getting crimped - could be anything. Imagine the connection being "worn down", for whatever reason, to a single strand of copper instead of, say, the normal 1/4". That single strand tries to carry, say, 10 amps - i.e., 1200W. That's more than enough to turn it into an incandescent fire-starter. I've often wondered, based on my experience with high-frequency systems, if designing a little gadget that occasionally sends a, say, 100MHz burst signal down a power cord and gauges its impedance (which would instantly catch situations like that) might be a worthwhile business idea. Then, I remember my forays into marketing stuff like that, and forget all about it. :) Ben -- OKOPNIK CONSULTING Custom Computing Solutions For Your Business Expert-led Training | Dynamic, vital websites | Custom programming 443-250-7895 http://okopnik.com http://twitter.com/okopnik _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list Liveaboard@liveaboardonline.com To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to liveaboard-j...@liveaboardonline.com To unsubscribe send an email to liveaboard-le...@liveaboardonline.com The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/liveaboard@liveaboardnow.org The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html