I thought it was only Amazon that sold unsafe junk

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Averagesupernova
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TL;DR
Unsafe cord on an under cabinet light.
I grabbed an under cabinet LED light today at a big box store. Nothing special. 18 inches in length and made to plug several lights together. Here is a pic of the power cord:

KIMG6521.webp

The drawing on the box led me to believe that it would accept a standard IEC cord which surprised me. But it's a variation of it. I didn't try it, but I would assume you could plug a standard IEC cord into this and have a double male cord AKA suicide cord. And to boot, it's likely going to reverse the hot and neutral doing this. Admittedly this cord is no safer than a suicide cord. This is a very well known popular brand in home lighting.
 
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I was about to say that I thought these things were supposed to be CE certified, but I see that only applies to the EU.
 
Averagesupernova said:
Admittedly this cord is no safer than a suicide cord.
Wow, that's not good. Are there any certification markings on the box or the cord? Anything like UL or similar?
 
I am not informed enough to understand the implications of the opening post.

It's male plug in a sheath so that it (optimally) only meshes with its female counterpart. I'm not sure if it's 12V or 120V.

Surely, any wiring setup can be rendered dangerous if you perform aftermarket shenanigans upon it.

OK, I guess what I'm seeing is that the shown plug is the live end, i .e. if you stuck your finger in there you'd get zapped? Which is why, generally, live ends are normally female?

But I'll take y'all's word for it that this is a gap in safe design.
 
DaveC426913 said:
OK, I guess what I'm seeing is that the shown plug is the live end, i .e. if you stuck your finger in there you'd get zapped? Which is why, generally, live ends are normally female?
Yes, we call them "suicide cords" or "widowmakers" because they don't obey safe practices of keeping AC Mains live wire connections hidden so they can't be touched. We used to have such cords or similar (with alligator clips for example) in our HW Lab test setups. But only very experienced engineers and technicians were allowed to use them, and we kept them locked up in drawers and cabinets when not in use so no unsuspecting person would try to use them for something.
 
 
Thread 'I thought it was only Amazon that sold unsafe junk'

Thread 'I thought it was only Amazon that sold unsafe junk'

I grabbed an under cabinet LED light today at a big box store. Nothing special. 18 inches in length and made to plug several lights together. Here is a pic of the power cord: The drawing on the box led me to believe that it would accept a standard IEC cord which surprised me. But it's a variation of it. I didn't try it, but I would assume you could plug a standard IEC cord into this and have a double male cord AKA suicide cord. And to boot, it's likely going to reverse the hot and...
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