Europlug

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The Europlug is a flat, two-pole domestic AC power plug that is generally supplied moulded on the end of an appliance's flex or a power cord, designed for voltages up to 250 V and currents up to 2.5 A.^[1] It was designed such that it can safely be used in the domestic power sockets of all European countries, except for the BS 1363 system found in Britain, Ireland and Malta.

Contents 1 History 2 Design considerations 3 Incompatibility with British sockets 4 Details 5 See also 6 References

[edit] History

The Europlug design appeared first in 1963 as Standard Sheet XVI in the second edition of CEE Publication 7^[2], a document that summarized all the national domestic AC plugs and sockets used across Europe. The Europlug is therefore sometimes also referred to as the "CEE 7/16" plug. It was also adopted in 1975 as plug C5 in IEC Technical Report 83 (now IEC/TR 60083^[3]), and as European standard EN 50075^[1] in July 1990.

[edit] Design considerations

The dimensions of the Europlug were chosen for compatibility and safe use, such that with all European domestic power sockets

• reliable contact is established when the plug is fully inserted;
• no live conductive parts are accessible while the plug is inserted into each type of socket;
• it is not possible to establish a connection between one pin and a live socket contact while the other pin is accessible.

Europlugs are only designed for low-power (less than 2.5 A) Class II (double-insulated) devices that operate at normal room temperature and do not require a protective-earth connection.

[edit] Incompatibility with British sockets

The Europlug is not compatible with British BS 1363 13 A sockets for (at least) three reasons:

• BS 1363 sockets contain a child-safety shutter and need an earth pin to be inserted before the live and neutral contacts become accessible.

• The ring circuits found in many British homes are only protected by high-current breakers (typically 32 A) and therefore rely on a lower-current fuse (typically 3–13 A) in each plug to protect the appliance cable from dangerous overcurrents when a fault occurs. Europlugs are not designed to contain fuses or switches. In most other European countries, it is customary to use radial circuits, where smaller groups of sockets are each protected with a fast-acting 10–16 A circuit breaker, a current limit that even Europlug cords can support briefly in fault situations.

• The free space between Europlug pins (13.5±0.5 mm) is about 2 mm less than the corresponding dimension in a BS 1363 socket (15.8 mm^[4]). To force a Europlug into a UK socket, each pin has to be bent by about 1 mm. The pins' flexibility usually allows for this, but the resulting bending force plus the fact that the conductive tip of each pin is 0.2 mm wider than the non-conductive shaft can sometimes make the pins difficult to remove from a BS 1363 socket. Although the 4 mm diameter of the Europlug pin gives it the same height as the corresponding BS 1363 pins, the latter are with 6.35 mm substantially wider, and are also located further apart. Therefore, whether a Europlug can achieve proper contact inside a BS 1363 socket depends on the exact manufacturer-specific construction of the contacts inside the socket. Proper contact is not guaranteed by the relevant standards.

It is, in principle, possible to insert a Europlug into a BS 1363 socket by inserting another object (such as a screwdriver or key) into the earth hole first. Doing so is not recommended for the above reasons. Nevertheless, in many countries where both BS 1363 and Europlug connectors are on the market (e.g., Malaysia, Singapore), such forcing of a Europlug into a BS 1363 socket is not an uncommon practice.

Equipment sold in Britain with a Europlug must be marked with or accompanied by a warning that it is not suitable for use in a British mains socket.^[5]

The flat design of the Europlug and the comparatively large shape of the British plug made it possible to design fused converter plugs that have outer dimensions only slightly larger than most normal BS 1363 plugs and that encapsulate an entire Europlug internally. They can be fitted quickly and safely by relatively unskilled personnel (there is no real way to get it wrong unlike a normal rewirable plug which can be miswired), making them attractive to manufacturers and importers who sell equipment in the UK that was manufactured using moulded Europlugs.

[edit] Details

The pins of the Europlug are 19 mm long. They consist of a 9 mm long conductive tip of 4 mm diameter with a rounded ending, followed by a 10 mm long flexible insulated shaft of not more than 3.8 mm diameter. The two pins are not exactly parallel and converge slightly; their centres are 17.5 mm apart at the tip and 18.6 mm apart at the base. The elasticity of the converging pins provides sufficient contact force for the Europlug's current rating with a variety of socket-hole arrangements. The entire plug is 35.3 mm wide and 13.7 mm high, and must not exceed these dimensions within 18 mm behind its front plane (this allows for the recesses on many European socket types). The left and right side of the plug are formed by surfaces that are at 45° relative to the horizontal plane.^[1]

[edit] See also

• Domestic AC power plugs and sockets
• IEC 60906-1 – the international standard for 230 V plugs and sockets
• Schuko – the CEE 7/4 system of plugs and sockets

[edit] References