It seems so.

I would hope one would have appropriate over-current protection in the circuit so that this scenario would never happen. ;) A problem with this test though I think is that all those connections seem to be freshly-made, and so haven't suffered the effects of years of hot-cold cycling, and degradation due to moisture/etc. I've seen plenty of choc-block connections fail badly in my time, to the point of setting on fire, purely down to contact resistance increasing as a consequence of the above. And thus melting/smoke/fire before any protection device kicks in. :/

+9ff70f96 hmmm. Good point about age of the connections. If I've only got 1 in 1 out of a choc block I'll stick them in the same side and use both screws on both wires, to try and keep the most surface area and reduce the chances of a high resistance join.

Yep, that's good practice, in my opinion. Nice to know others out there put the effort in too. :)

Thanks, now I don't have to watch the video. idiot

I have been trying to convince myself to do pretwisted, but does not Pretwisted stress the copper, which can also cause a wire to come loose. Really don't see wire nut connection coming loose just by pull, the only way I can see coming loose is the spring overheating

@@La2venida I've seen some rather crazy looking pretwisting, and yes it does seem to cause more stress on the copper. Theoretically if everything is within specifications (such as maximum current) this kind of exercise is really just for dramatic effect. I will say that of these four different connector types, the plastic wire nut is the only one that relies on the plastic portion to maintain the mechanical connection between wires. All the others are really just the plastic portion preventing electrical contact with everything outside the connector. But if the plastic portion of a wire nut is gone, the steel spiral isn't necessarily going to hold the wires in place. However, it shouldn't get to the point where it's going to melt.

Why is that a good thing that the connections 'held up'? This demonstration doesn't make a lot of sense.

That would have made a fasinating addition to the vid.

+Philip Burkett Yes I agree, seeing a hot spot form would be very informative. I use Wagos mostly now as I found crimps unreliable on solid core wire especially cheaper ones even using a good crimping ratchet tool.

Whereas Wagos are not intended for stranded wire.

According to Wago they are good for both solid core and stranded wire.

Programentalist Have you ever tried pushing very fine stranded wire into a Wago terminal?

Some of them also work on stranded wire and not just solid core. This can be pretty useful when connecting lamps and other appliances

Yup those are the best

For building wiring I prefer the non-lever type because they're quicker and cheaper. Most domestic fixed wiring here is 1.5 and 2.5 solid, so the non-lever connectors (2273 series) are perfectly suitable. I do use the lever types for connecting lights and other items wired with flex. Never had one fail so far. Out of the many I've installed myself I've only had one choc block fail though, so they aren't that bad either. It's mostly down to properly tightening the screws I think. Wagos are massively faster and nicer to use though, so choc blocks are mostly a thing of the distant past for me. I feel sort of nostalgic for them but sticking in five wires and keeping them from slipping back out while tightening the screw is definitely rather annoying.

That wouldn't be a realistic scenario.

and 90A on a 1,5mm² is?

can't get a much bigger wire than that though from what I see

That's what I'm saying. Many of these test introduce the wire to current that code would not allow for. However there are larger wago connectors with up to 8 ports. Presumably the added metal would allow for more current but I still do not trust them.

the wago bridge heated higher than the wire, you can see it heat the wire near the connector. as long as it's thick enough for the rated circuit it may be ok, but I can see where they can become hotspots.

my bad experience is rusted choc-blok screws

Same is true of the screw terminals on sockets and light switches. It's usually what causes the wire to break when fitting a new one.

TheChipmunk2008 thats why its important to not nick the wire or bend to much or to sharply nice vid.

Comparing to the untested wire, it looks like it was a little way from where you would have stripped the wire. In fact, there's still some insulation on the bit that's in the connector. It is where the wire is bent but not sure if that's relevant.

Looks like it failed at a hard bend. Assuming that was AC, that would be a high inductive resistance. The Wire nut also has high inductive resistance, but the spring and other material gives it more heat sinking capacity.

+Copper Hamster I don't think inductive effects would be within a bull's roar of being significant at 50Hz. The inductance of a bend like that wouldn't even be significant at 50MHz, and the wire nut does not form an inductor at all. Also, the correct term is impedance, not inductive resistance.

+Godfrey Poon To be fair, I think Copper Hamster meant inductive reactance, which when combined with capacitive reactance, forms the complex component of the electrical impedance vector. Resistance is the real component.

bdf2718 I popped it

My Power meter is smoking. Well it can take a bit more. Oh, i broke it.

Where that bloke's at, by the way?

Send you wire to photonic !

Where's my 'ammer?

Best case scenario no wire is loose, which is why many regions don't use them.

There's no direct wire to wire connection in any of these other than the wire nut. Butt connectors have a piece of metal between the crimp ends, the WAGO push-in uses springs (which might provide some conductivity) placing the wires against a bus bar, and a terminal/choc block uses a metal base. I've seen some testing and one of the highest resistances came from just trying to touch wires together. With a wire nut, the resistance can vary depending on how much twisting there is between wires. Push-in connectors tend to be very stable in terms of how much contact there is using a spring. I've heard criticism that the contact area with the wire is small (and thus resistance is higher), but I don't believe that's so much the issue as much as whether or not it will overheat under rated current.

He reminds me more of a weather man!

My dad would turn on NOAA weather radio whenever he had trouble sleeping he said it would put him to sleep in a few minutes.

Contact area is overrated. Look at a push-in connector and how it contacts the bus bar, and there can be a fairly small contact area yet it meets all relevant safety standards. The most important thing is going to be that the connector is not going to overheat when used within its specified current rating. I've used wire nuts without pretwisting and according to a manufacturer's directions where undoing the connection and the wire tips are loosely against each other and don't really hold together.

In one instance I've come across a junction box full of Wagos (2273, the exact type shown in the video) where several wires just fell out when I touched the connectors. The whole box was full of signs of super-sloppy work though, stripped wire length all over the place, lots of exposed live copper and generally a rats nest - imagine a 200x200 mm box with all wires for a large room with five groups of lighting (two of them on two-way switches) and a bunch of sockets crammed in! (In Austria it's acceptable and rather common to mix lights and sockets and the whole box was just one circuit). My task was to find out why and how all the sockets in the room had ended up being switched with the wall lights and change them to permanently live. Took me a while to figure out the layout and find all the splices behind the sockets but eventually managed.

In the Netherlands chocblocks are forbidden in mainwirering the crimp butt connector also. Before the adoption of wago push in early 1980 we used wirenuts. Wirenuts are better if done correctly but hard to do so with 5 wires. Wago connectors are fine if you keep the current ratings in mind. Do not reuse them to many times If you think the spring lost his tention do discard them.

MultiArrie Same in Germany, only I never run Info wire nuts, even in older Installations. Chocblocks are forbidden in junction boxes, but still okay for light fixtures, also mostly today the clamping wago Type ist preferred. Instead of wire nuts in older stuff KZfaq will find Lots of WhatsApp Looks Like half chocblocks with one Screenshot and all wires inserted from one Side.

The only time I've seen fail choc blocks fail is when an idiot doesn't strip the wire ends & relies on the screws to puncture the insulation. This make the choc block act as bridge & if its not rated properly, will overheat melting the plastic, allowing the metal barrel to come into contact with stuff it should not. I would normally strip the wire twice the length of the barrel. Double them over & make sure that the wires are clamped by both screws.

The question is, how long do spring clamp type terminals last in an environment where it is humid?

It stands for BluePoint, a company long since bust

@@Bobo-ox7fj - Oh yeah, that's right, I remember now. I worked for Clipsal when they purchased BluePoint. I inspected the factory at Padstow NSW where thick brass/bronze wire was unrolled, stamped and turned into the screws and connector barrels. The machines were many decades old and still ran 24/7... It was incredibly old fashioned and felt like it would have been steam powered when it first started 😃

Oh yeah, crimp connections are extremely awful when you don't have good tools. Many years ago I used to work in clay mining industry and these were used for connecting control circuits to bucket-wheel excavator. We had to solder these (guerilla style - bucket, campfire and lot of solder - these were pretty big connectors, as all the control was based on pretty beefy contactors) because there was no hydraulic crimper available on site and if we used manual one it was failing after a week or two.

I don't believe wire nuts have ever been banned from use in the UK, although obviously they've never been terribly common. My understanding is that they fell out of use because of the older style ceramic caps that didn't contain a metal spiral. They basically had threads cut into the ceramic and the threads cutting into the wires as the thread spiral got smaller is what held wires in place. I understand they weren't always terribly secure and had a tendency to break when overtightened. I can't even get a modern plastic wire nut to crack using pliers. I've been dealing with older homes and replacing old connections. I've seen some ghastly soldered connections that were covered with vinyl electrical tape, rubber splicing tape, and/or friction tape. I've also encountered wires that were twisted together, then covered with a crimp sleeve, and finally covered with tape. These were variously replaced with wire nuts or lever-style connectors like a WAGO 221 or Ideal In-Sure L2.

Every region has their own ideas, and everyone thinks theirs are the best.

I agree with you points Mike. I too was always taught to use crimps only on stranded (I did my apprenticeship in 1977). Having said that a properly crimped connection on solid drawn conductor is going to be fine. A correctly sized and installed screw connection is bomb proof and maintenance free in my book. There are hundreds of screw connections I made 20, or 30 years ago that are still working safely.

@@canopus101 just consider how many items use screw fittings,sockets,lampholders,lightswitches,plugtops and so on....few will ever get looked at after the day of fitting

Multi strand (Engish word)

I don't think the wago 222 type relies on the plastic levers to apply the force, it's the other way round. The levers are used to open the gate and when you release them a spring clamps the wires.

That would make more sense, yes, thanks :D

That is correct; the plastic lever pushes down the metal springy bit to release; when the lever is down, it doesn't touch it and the springy bit clamps the wire. Look at Wago's demonstration video(s).

Actually I think the 222 types have a even stronger connection. Other types you can twist and pullout the wires but doing this on the 222 type is much harder. You need a mechanical lever to insert something while on the other types you can simply push the wire in.

wire nuts dont ever fail thats how we wire all our high power in our houses in the usa you wingnut lol

Yes you can

The marret/wire nut with tape on top to make it more secure is the way that feel good for an old electrician who think that the young generation has nothing good to teach them. If the wire nut get loose, the tape will keep the wire together, preventing short circuit with the metal enclosure. The professionals reasoning is: wire nut of the correct size for the number of wire you intend to fix are stronger than this tape which get dry over time and fall by itself. However, if the wire nut fail and a wire get exposed, we prefer to get a short circuit to the metal box which is always connected to the ground, right? It is better that a fuse blow and the light stop working and force the user to inspect the electrical problem. If electrical tape is holding the wire despite the poor electrical contact, the user may tolerate that intermittent blinking light for years... until the heat from that bad contact finally start a fire. This cheap electrical tape at $1 dollar store is probably not fireproof I imagine. It just add combustible to your electric box.

Wago are fine for permanent connections.

As explained here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/aZuGo6x2ltWvo5c.html

This is actually a bad demonstration. Most electrical fires do not start because of a heavily overloaded wire, but because of dodgy wire connections at currents well wirhin the projected limits of the wire itself. So the connections are the critical pointsm not the wire itself.

Damn no, it is quite irritating, if you make a video try and keep your voice constant, going up and down like that can make your listeners seasick.

I find it irritating as well. I have been speaking English for 50+ years and still find it difficult to understand the speaker. Anyone else would never finish this video.

Yes, it's an M102 from 1965.

@@jwflame oh cool. Thought it looked familiar lol i think mine is a 58

Everywhere in America. They were the gold standard here for a long time. Actually not bad if used properly.

Looks like an old arc welder.

Not sure about how well every spring type works. I've removed one and took it apart and wasn't terribly convinced it was a good design. However, this was from a "lowest bidder" company that made some good products. These did have European and American testing lab approvals, but even then I wasn't convinced the spring material was very good. Now a WAGO or Ideal push-in connector I would trust. The lever-type connector is another matter. Those use individual springs compared to one piece of stainless steel formed into separate fingers like with most push-in connectors. I would trust those springs to maintain pressure indefinitely.

Not available here, and never used for anything.