Connectors (i.e. Plugs & Sockets)
There are a bewildering variety of electrical power connectors available. The next few introductory paragraphs should help you to identify and describe the most common sorts and then to choose the ones which will best suit your needs. If in doubt please contact us.
Most people reading this page will be interested in 110 Volt, 230 Volt, and 415 Volt plugs and sockets. These are colour coded yellow (110 Volt), blue (220-240 Volt), and red (380-415 Volt). Most of our customers require the red 415 Volt connectors.
Then you need to choose the current rating of the connector. They come in the following standard sizes: 16 Amps, 32 Amps, 63 Amps, and 125 Amps. Almost all our customers use 16 Amp connectors. It is most unusual to purchase anything larger than a 32 Amp connector.
Next it is necessary to decide whether a male is required (a plug) or a female (a socket). Irrespective of whether the connector is fixed (i.e. surface mounted on a machine or wall, or through panel mounted into a machine) or free / trailing (i.e. flops around on the end of a cable) the connectors with pins are male (plugs) and the connectors with holes are female (sockets). Don't laugh - it is easy to mistake a trailing socket for a plug, and descriptions over the phone can be misleading because some parts of the 415 V female connector penetrate into the body of the 415 V male connector. Plugs are generally trailing 'in line' or less commonly trailing 'right angled'. Right angled plugs are very neat if the socket is mounted on a vertical surface as it keeps the cables next to the wall but have the disadvantage of obscuring any sockets immediately underneath or of clashing with work surfaces below and for this reason most plugs are of the 'in-line' variety. Sockets can be 'straight out', or slant at about 15 degrees to the mounting surface. The last style thing to choose is whether to have a flap - sockets tend to have a spring loaded flap as they are more likely to be live when unconnected and therefore pose a hazard if there is water around, and the flaps latch onto the plugs. Some trailing in-line plugs also have flaps to minimise water ingress on wet decks but this is less common and one needs to check for a clash between the flaps of the male and female. Correctly assembled the versions with flaps etc. achieve an IP44 rating. Lastly some have a flap & breech lock screw action to minimise the risk of them being tampered with and which interlock with each other to prevent them working loose, and which can increase the IP rating to 67.
Then you need to choose how many pins you require. It is unusual for 110 Volt and 230 Volt supplies to be anything other than single phase and so these will normally have three pins for the live (L), neutral (N) and earth (E or PE) connections. However the red 415 Volt supplies and equipment come in either four pin or five pin configurations - both have an earth (E or PE) and the three phases (L1, L2, and L3) but sometimes a neutral is provided (N or L4) and sometimes it is not. The four pin x 16 Amp x 415 Volt connector is physically incompatible with the five pin connector and so it is important to make the correct choice. If your three phase machinery requires a neutral then you must choose a five pin connector. Even if there is only one piece of machinery which requires a five pin connector on a site, then it is best to fit five pin connectors to everything as the neutral can simply be left unconnected in the machinery which does not use it. In catalogues you will often find: three pins referred to as 2P+E; four pins referred to as 3P+E and five pins referred to as 3P+E+N. In the larger 230 Volt connectors there is an extra earth pin (a fourth pin) which is ignored when stating the number of pins.
In summary you will need to select voltage, current, male / female (plug / socket), mounting, style, and number of pins. Below we have a table of prices for the common connectors which we stock - and we can rapidly obtain almost anything else you may need even if we don't happen to have it in stock.
Switches
The following switches are
normally used in machine tools to control motor speed and
direction. They are panel mounted which means they fit plain
cabinets with a hole drilled to accept the body of the switch and
four smaller holes into which the faceplate is bolted. These
switches are high quality and are sourced from the same
manufacturer that many of the original machine tool manufacturers
used. The switches in the table below cover most needs, and we can
provide others if required.
The colour scheme is black handle
with black face plate edges and black writing on a silver
background. The switch is 48 mm square and the four mounting
holes of Ø4.5mm are on 36 x 36 mm square centers. The center hole
is Ø43mm. Penetration of the switch barrel is as per the table
below.
