# I can't even believe this...



## g15 (Mar 21, 2010)

So yesterday, I was working above the grid at a high school. I'm carrying some stage pin cable, when I hear something fall and then someone yell from the ground to be more careful and not drop stuff. And I reply, "um...I have no idea what that was." So I start looking around and see that one of the cables I was carrying is now missing a stage pin connector. I take it down, find the fallen connector and pass the cable off to someone else to fix. He looks at the cable and sees that the ends are stripped WAY too far back. He fixes it and then opens up the other end just to check it out. This is what he found...


----------



## Morpheus (Mar 21, 2010)

Nah, that'll work just fine...






Guess that was the first time the cable woulld've been used since the "repair"


----------



## Les (Mar 21, 2010)

Someone doesn't understand the fundamentals of electricity and has no business repairing cables! Is a village missing its idiot by any chance?


----------



## Sean (Mar 21, 2010)

g15 said:


> So yesterday, I was working above the grid at a high school. I'm carrying some stage pin cable, when I hear something fall and then someone yell from the ground to be more careful and not drop stuff. And I reply, "um...I have no idea what that was." So I start looking around and see that one of the cables I was carrying is now missing a stage pin connector. I take it down, find the fallen connector and pass the cable off to someone else to fix. He looks at the cable and sees that the ends are stripped WAY too far back. He fixes it and then opens up the other end just to check it out. This is what he found...



so...

How long of a cable was attached to this connector? It looks like you have a combination of 'stripped too far', the connector not grabbing the jacket of the cable (no strain relief), and abuse of the cable. I think the cable got yanked pretty firmly. The insulation just pulled away from the plug, but the copper was captured.

Make sense?

--Sean


----------



## gafftapegreenia (Mar 22, 2010)

Always amazes me how people don't understand the concept of INSULATION. Isn't that taught in elementary school? Or at the fire station when the Edison guys cook a hot dog in a punctured glove?


Also, those type of pins are not as effective without their ferrules.


----------



## Chris15 (Mar 22, 2010)

I'm with Sean on this one, that looks more like symptoms of abuse than initial miswiring...

Hence why we bother with strain relief...


----------



## ajb (Mar 22, 2010)

That there's whatcha call a breaker finder. Great for identifying the source of those unlabled circuits. Favored by dimmer repair techs who like to bill for replacing monolithic dimmer cubes.

It's quite difficult to pull the copper out of SO that far, it definitely had to have been done wrong to begin with.


----------



## WestlakeTech (Mar 22, 2010)

gafftapegreenia said:


> Always amazes me how people don't understand the concept of INSULATION. *Isn't that taught in elementary school?* Or at the fire station when the Edison guys cook a hot dog in a punctured glove?



Yes, but personally I didn't really get it til 10th or 11th grade...


----------



## g15 (Mar 22, 2010)

The cable is only about 5 feet long. And the connector appeared to be pretty new while the cable is much older. Which, rather disturbingly, leads me to believe that someone put it on like that. Although it was missing its strain relief so it is possible it got yanked really hard...


----------



## MNicolai (Mar 22, 2010)

g15 said:


> The cable is only about 5 feet long. And the connector appeared to be pretty new while the cable is much older. Which, rather disturbingly, leads me to believe that someone put it on like that. Although it was missing its strain relief so it is possible it got yanked really hard...



Even without strain relief, it's pretty hard (impossible?) to accidentally yank the insulation 2" along each of the three conductors, especially when each one is 5' long. That kind of force would have removed the conductors from the terminals.


----------



## wolf825 (Mar 22, 2010)

To quote a famous line... "Well THERE's your problem..."



-w


----------



## philhaney (Mar 22, 2010)

A former boss of mine, who has since passed on, told me of a time that the TD from the other venue in town (a school) came by and asked to borrow a box of dimmer fuses, as they both used the same type and he was out. My boss gave the other person a box and sent him on his way.

About an hour later, the other TD was back asking for another box. Since they are expensive, my boss went over to the other venue to investigate. Turns out a student was making two-fers up in the catwalk, and was stripping about 6 inches of insulation off each wire.....


----------



## g15 (Mar 22, 2010)

philhaney said:


> A former boss of mine, who has since passed on, told me of a time that the TD from the other venue in town (a school) came by and asked to borrow a box of dimmer fuses, as they both used the same type and he was out. My boss gave the other person a box and sent him on his way.
> 
> About an hour later, the other TD was back asking for another box. Since they are expensive, my boss went over to the other venue to investigate. Turns out a student was making two-fers up in the catwalk, and was stripping about 6 inches of insulation off each wire.....



oops.....

And I found another one today. Was wondering why out second set of red cyc lights weren't working...and why that breaker on the dimmer tripped when we reset it... So someone around there is just an idiot.....


----------



## Anvilx (Mar 23, 2010)

gafftapegreenia said:


> Always amazes me how people don't understand the concept of INSULATION. Isn't that taught in elementary school? Or at the fire station when the Edison guys cook a hot dog in a punctured glove?



Lets see I remember officially learning about it in 5th grade, elementary school.
However, I had some electronics kit in about kindergarten, I didn't really understand it more then you hook this wire up to that to make a light bulb light up. The problem was the kit didn't cover any electrical safety (but then again I couldn't read). One day during "nap time" in kindergarten I realized that paperclips were a lot like the little wires in my kit and the electrical socket was a lot like the little 9v I had played with. (I am sure many of can see where this is heading.) And so I thought I would experiment and see if I could make some sort of a circuit out of the paper clip. I unbent it and then inserted it into the socket. The smell of burning flesh permeated the air as I yanked my hand out of there as fast as I possibly could. I looked at my hand, my thumb and index finger were lightly branded with the shape of a paperclip. In the end I was 100% fine, the teacher freaked out, I was sent to the nurse, and my parents were later notified. 
But really what I learned that day was that the difference between the paperclip and the wire in the kit was that plastic stuff on the outside called insulation.


----------



## n1ist (Mar 23, 2010)

g15-
At this point, I would start opening up every connector, looking for more with this problem. Resetting a breaker into a short is bad enough, but imagine one of these faulting when someone is holding it. Arc flash is not fun.
/mike


----------



## Anvilx (Mar 23, 2010)

n1ist said:


> g15-
> At this point, I would start opening up every connector, looking for more with this problem. Resetting a breaker into a short is bad enough, but imagine one of these faulting when someone is holding it. Arc flash is not fun.
> /mike



Do what I did and go buy yourself a nice pair of linesmens and carry them around with you to snip off unsafe connectors.


----------



## gafftapegreenia (Mar 23, 2010)

Anvilx said:


> Do what I did and go buy yourself a nice pair of linesmens and carry them around with you to snip off unsafe connectors.



Or a pair of Diags - either way, nothing says "DO NOT USE" like clipping off a bad connector.


----------



## wolf825 (Mar 23, 2010)

g15 said:


> oops.....
> 
> And I found another one today. Was wondering why out second set of red cyc lights weren't working...and why that breaker on the dimmer tripped when we reset it... So someone around there is just an idiot.....





Sounds like its time to have folks do some repairs while you watch...or have them sign their name to a repair tag so you can discover this 'special needs' person....


-w


----------



## DuckJordan (Mar 23, 2010)

I like that idea, cause then you can almost automatically figure out who it is and properly teach them (if they can be taught)


----------



## photoatdv (Mar 23, 2010)

My last couple of years of high school I started having the crew initial when they marked stuff as bad or good or whatever so that I knew A. if I needed to check it myself and B. who I needed to have a chat with if it was marked wrong...

My favorite one once was a teacher came to me asking if some intercoms were definitely bad. I said look at them and if I initialed them then they were bad, and to give me the ones that I didn't initial to check. Teacher then says well yeah you initialed all of them as bad, so are they bad? I think it took me about a minute to pick my jaw up off the ground.


----------



## zmb (Mar 24, 2010)

I once saw a connector with no insulation (thankfully removed from a cable) and only two wires inside it.


----------



## SHARYNF (Mar 25, 2010)

I have seen someone actually try to just use masking tape for insulation. 
And I have had someone actually say well MOST of the little wire strands are not touching
And it what MIGHT have been the situation in the photo someone has stripped way too much insulation off, and for some reason refused to just cut back the bare wire, and forgot that the wires are likely to twist and turn and obviously short out.

Sharyn


----------



## Tex (Apr 4, 2010)

That's not a stage pin connector. That's a pyrotechnic effect!


----------



## blackisthenewblack (Apr 12, 2010)

just saying, I don't think that the original cable was from abuse, besides the whole new connector. how is it that several strands from the green I think are wrapped around the other. That almost looks like someone decided to give the wire an arbitrary twist


----------

