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Old 05-09-2011, 07:35 AM   #21
BigFella
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Join Date: Sep 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yep View Post
I still don't get how any of this amounts to anything other than throwing up a bunch of technical-sounding sand.

Anything with a "third prong" has it for either your safety, or for the safety of the machine, or both. If there is no benefit, it doesn't have one. No sane manufacturer or electrical engineer includes one just for the hell of it.

I'm trying to be polite, but as a manufacturer and design engineer with products both CE and UL-listed, the notion that the ground/earth pin/prong is unimportant is plain wrong. It's cheaper and easier to omit it if there is no reason for it.

In some cases it's there more to protect the equipment than the user, but it's never included for no reason.
It is often the case that the 'third prong' is not electrically connected to the system, it is there simply to physically open the gates for the other two pins. With so many cheap and effective solutions however there is still no case for removing the earth connection on anything.
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