We’ve got a love-hate relationship with discount tool outlet Harbor Freight: we hate that we love it so much. Apparently, [James Clough] is of much the same opinion, at least now that he’s looked into the quality of their outlet strips and found it somewhat wanting.
The outlet strips in question are Harbor Freight’s four-foot-long, twelve-outlet strips, three of which are visible from where this is being written. [James] has a bunch of them too, but when he noticed an intermittent ground connection while using an outlet tester, he channeled his inner [Big Clive] and tore one of the $20 strips to bits. The problem appears to be poor quality of the contacts within each outlet, which don’t have enough spring pre-load to maintain connection with the ground pin on the plug when it’s wiggled around. Actually, the contacts for the hot and neutral don’t look all that trustworthy either, and the wiring between the outlets is pretty sketchy too. The video below shows the horrors within.
What’s to be done about this state of affairs? That’s up to you, of course. We performed the same test on all our outlets and the ground connections all seemed solid. So maybe [James] just got a bad batch, but he’s still in the market for better-quality strips. That’s going to cost him, though, since similar strips with better outlets are about four times the price of the Harbor Freight units. We did find a similar strip at Home Depot for about twice the price of the HF units, but we can’t vouch for the quality. As always, caveat emptor.
Thanks to [cliff claven] for the tip.
Fault seems to lie with the flakey NEMA outlet that generally falls out should you look at it the wrong way. Easily solved with something like a CEE 7 or BS 4373.
No, this is fault of the internal design of outlet component and not a fault of the NEMA standard. A CEE 7 or BS 1363 outlet designed the same way will be just as faulty. May I suggest you watch the video before commenting?
#include <kryten.gif>
“BS 4373:1968 Methods for analysis of the elastomeric thread in an elastic fabric”
I have one of these. Mine isn’t intermittent but I did open it up once and noticed how cheap it is. I’ve been meaning to do something about it for a while now.
Is it certified by Underwriters Laboratories or a similar organization? If so, there is probably a consumer-complaint procedure.
You might also be able to complain to the vendor (Harbor Freight) – if complaints pile up about a particular vendor, they may change vendors.
You might also be able to get traction with your local Fire Marshall or whoever enforces fire codes for electrical devices. Maybe not so much in the USA, where government code-enforcement isn’t known for being “consumer-oriented,” but maybe in your country/locality.
It is allegedly certified by ETL.
Both ETL and UL are considered equivalent. So either the power strip in question was a bad batch or the quality slipped after the original testing. I would still submit the complaint to ETL and UL, if they get quite a few they can probably ban shipment and sale until the quality is fixed.
It’s worth looking up the certificate number, if you can find one
https://ramuk.intertekconnect.com/webclients/its/dlp/products.nsf/$$search?openform
I learned a while ago, power strips of any quality are shocking inside :p
Seriously though go open any of them up from any brand and prepare yourself
I did just that. An el-cheapo Ikea strip was shockingly more robust. Nice side spring strips rather than a single suspect top strip as seen in the video.
After my HF outlet literally fell apart trying to plug in a cord I decided you get what you pay for.
I have 2 solutions which I use:
1. run new circuits to power my devices
2. Buy quality outlet strips from Falconer Electronics.
I used to get these from Frys.
I wonder if those were any better.
In Europe, the CE mark would solve/prevent this:
If the seller is selling something without (actual valid) CE, they’re personally responsible. Not the legal entity being a company, but actually the person, locked up in prison.
If CE is on the device, the person (delegating) signing off for the declaration of conformity is liable, and this is always a person registered within EU (ie. the CTO, CEO, etc.) with the same actual sentencing (financial crime, even if nothing else happened)
This makes it a really good incentive to make sure the products in the shop is what it states it is…
I’ve been to Europe many times.
Dual citizen.
Germany, the land of exposed wiring.
Consequence of concrete walls.
I’ve seen the lamp relocation kits at buildhaus.
Exposed wires with double sticky tape applied plastic ‘conduit’ to hide it, but not protect it.
Also the nightmare state of some old relatives apartments.
Clean as can be, but don’t look at all the exposed wires on the walls and ceilings.
All to code, just bad code.
Rules crazy Germans.
For a good time in Europe, avoid Germany.
Prague was fun, strippers full tilt ripoff though.
Black Swine Beer Bar!
I digress.
Wow! You’re a dual citizen of Europe. Must be nice.
Right? It would be rather nice to have an escape hatch like that.
Geez, take a deep breath guys
yep!
Reality:
Young German relatives want to come here (California), some currently in Florida (Miami…but what do you expect from Berliners), some even to Missouri.
Not all, just the ones that made grades.
It has been useful working overseas without hassle.
Also German doctor cousin with electric truck nuts (L/R LEDs hooked to trailer connector) on vehicle in Germany!
The ‘Horn broken watch for finger’ sticker was too much though. He said Nein.
We are a weird family.
Fun though.
those aren’t exposed wires, they are armored cable. no different than what is allowed in the US, except that they use steel wires embedded in the rubber jacket for armor instead of an exposed aluminum helix.
That’s the UK, SWA is basically unheard of in Germany.
That aside, I don’t see a problem with exposed NYM or NYY or NYM/NYY in plastic conduit.
LOL, I though old Japan wiring was bad. Still, rather convenient in some cases.
Funny, because I see the CE as a joke certification and always look for the TUV marking. CE means nothing to me, TUV is the only certification I accept. Bad quality electronics only have CE (Chinese Export) markings, but no TUV.
China doesn’t bother with a “China Export” marking any more. They just print all the certification markings and know nobody is going to call them on it, or do anything about it.
As far as I can tell “China Export” mark is a complete myth. One batch of goods spaced their CE marking wrong, and people drummed up an imaginary conspiracy whilst the actual manufacturers just corrected their spacing (legitimate or fake). No manufacturer of fake goods applying a fake CE mark would deliberately make their fake marking wrong if they knew better.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-6-2007-5938-ASW_EN.html
I believe “China Export” was a joke – not a real resignation but an imagined excuse that a company peddling items with bogus CE markings might make if called on it. It does underscore the volume of phony certifications, but you can’t tell if a mark has a different meaning by the spacing between the C and E.
That’s a bold lie. “C E” is used only on super-expensive products like calibrated test equipment. 99,9% products on the market are “CE” as in “China Export” and there’s no one to complain to. You just repair it yourself or buy a new one.
This canard again. There is no such thing as the “China Export” symbol.
https://www.kimuagroup.com/news/differences-between-ce-and-china-export-markings/
It’s still nonsense. You can read about it here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#%22China_Export%22
“China Export” only sounds like an English term, in reality it’s Chinese for “fake label”.
That’s a bold lie, reputable manufacturers and importers pay labs (I worked at one, we tested for some major supermarkets as well as manufacturers) to test compliance with standards and then put the CE mark (among others, take a look at your laptop or phone charger) on their products, even down to the tiny test switches you find in the boxes for battery powered Christmas lights.
Yes there are products out there which have fake CE marks and if you suspect you’ve bought one then you should approach your local equivalent of Trading Standards, especially if you believe the product is unsafe.
There’s a whole bunch of webpages about how and who to complain to about unsafe products in the UK and across the EU, I’d be amazed if there weren’t equivalents in most other European countries, EG: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/consumer-products-reporting-product-safety-issues but, frankly, I’d not be surprised if the US was bereft of them.
If your local authority doesn’t have a way for you to report unsafe products then maybe you should be complaining about them instead of repeating debunked stories around internet forums.
Reputable being the keyword here. I work for a “reputable” one and we don’t pay labs. But we ensured that product is safe and has good quality, with all required certificates. CE doesn’t mean “we have it certified 100%”, only “yeah, we are pretty sure it will work properly, if not we risk going out of business, 99% will work, pinky swear”.
Sure, as a manufacturer you can self certify and a lot do but I wold expect that you also make efforts to ensure the stuff is built to a quality that would comply because, as you say, that’s a really good way to go out of business if it doesn’t
CE only means manufacturer made a declaration of conformity nothing more. I’m sure the average Chinese manufacturer is trustworthy, right? They wouldn’t just change their name and start back up tomorrow if caught cheating, right? I’m sure a Chinese court would let you sue them for damages and false advertising, right?
Y’all baiting in a bait thread.
Unfortunately Chinese have perverted CE letters, it means “Chinese Explort” and has nothing to do with safety compliance. If something you’re buying has CE mark and it’s shipped from China, assume it’s not the real CE safety mark but import mark
The European Commission has an official statement on this. There is no such thing as a ‘China Export’ mark. Only companies using CE wrong.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/P-6-2007-5938-ASW_EN.html
Because CE is self certification you could always use it fraudulently but you could face fines or being blocked from selling. There is currently a procedure against Aliexpress for these kinds of things.
Nice bit of casual racism there ‘e’ and a load of rubbish too.
It’s a joke because everyone knows CE is a declaration that the manufacturer says it complies with safety regulations. Which means exactly nothing when the manufacturer is outside your legal jurisdiction.
See the Wikipedia link above, in reply to udif.
It’s amazing how hard it is to debunk a myth. The ‘Chinese Export’ story is a myth, that will never die if people repeat it without a little fact checking.
Has AVE still been pushing that one? He used to a LOT.
He’s being sarcastic…because the CE mark means nothing in terms of certification and every Chinese company uses it instead of reputable marks like UL.
The CE mark does not ‘solve’ or ‘prevent’ anything.
The CE mark does not indicate any certification. It only indicates that the manufacturer, or whomever placed the product on the marketplace, has supposedly published a Declaration of Conformity.
This declaration does not have to have any test data generated by a Notified Body. Any supporting compliance data would be provided by the manufacturer.
As for an ETL mark, or a mark from any other NRTL, good luck with that. They are paper mills.
Looks like UL STD 1463 is a standard for wire. https://iq.ul.com/awm/stylepage.aspx?style=1463
I have a few of these, and similar, as well as the smaller versions. They all appear to have similar construction. I knew what I was paying for when I bought them, but….
I also have several top-line strips for server racks and the like. The style with LED displays for current, surge and transient suppression, and 100baseT ports for remote monitoring. They are ALL of excellent quality. But for a price, even surplus. Well worth the price.
It appears these should have been soldered? But as usual with harbor freight they start out good and then cost cut it as long as it looks mostly the same on the outside.
I should add $20 will get you enough shallow work boxes and certified outlets to make your own power strip, which is what I have done before. If you want it to look decent put them in a length of square plastic drain pipe.
Alternatively get the harbor freight kit and solder the wires. 🤷🏼♂️
Soldering will delay the inevitable. If there’s movement, the solder will eventually crack.
Some kind of spring clip secured in place would perhaps solve the problem.
Sorry, these replies were in regard only to the wire-to-receptacle terminal interface. The problem noted in the video is how the terminals in the receptacle contact the plug male parts.
For that, you could bend the terminals to create more preload, but they’ll likely bend back to where there’s not enough over time (assuming the outlets are plugged/unplugged often enough). If you’re just going to plug something in once and leave it there, that might be okay. But the best solution is to replace the receptacles themselves with better ones.
I opened up a few that I bought at “reputable” sellers. if the bare wires are even capable of 10 or 15 Amps a.c. , All the quality depts of the hardware stores and CE tick and UL are failing us. they don’t have techs and engineers, just admins and middle managers validating fake testing documents.
Which lends credence to my saying, “Everything you buy is crap anymore.”
Wow, I was going to get one of these for my bench. I’m really glad I didn’t.
I will probably just get some boxes and real outlets.
I have learnt, with sparks and smoke, not to put my powerbar under the bench flush at the front.
I was merrily soldering something once, with a length of solder pulled from the spool. I put the end down to grab something else and it slipped off the front edge of the bench and drooped down, landing on a plug in the powerbar. Only trouble, the plug wasn’t pushed completely into the receptacle. Electrical contact was made, with a nice zap, flash, and some amount of molten solder spray. Fortunately zero injury. The project I was working on was delayed a bit as I immediately remounted the powerbar a bit further under the edge of the bench top.
That’s why the “face” should not be seen, ground up and less loose wiggle as well. I’d rather see whats there but have power at the sides not center to the work space.
The depth of the “v” that the copper wire snaps into isn’t deep enough with spring back to grip and stay gripped. As things move it carves a loose grip in soft copper and then crap. I would solder one of these. I thought there was molded over soft plastic here, that’s when extension cords get wonky and start fires.
Nice. I had a whisker of copper wire drift off the bench and do something very similar. Just a quick green-and-white flash, and a SNAP, with only the tiny trail of exploded wire as a clue what happened.
Here in the EU the problem is very similar. Pre made extension cords tend to be of an extremely low quality. I’m quite amazed that some of the stuff is even allowed to be sold here. And on top of that, pre-built extension cords are not openable. (I think this is a mandatory EU regulation, but I’m not sure). As a result, you can’t inspect the quality, or for example replace the plugs (the metal housing itself from the Clough 42 video looks quite nice) or repair it (although they are usually not repairable because of too low quality.
Also too bad he did not open the Tripp-Lite strip. I’m curious about it’s build quality, and you can not judge that by just inserting a test plug into it.
You will find that they meet the minimum safety standard.
Tripp build to a price point so there are various quality levels however as far as I know they are all UL approved which means actual testing (not declarations of comformity). They also have a pretty good history and brand reputation.
Because overseas manufacturers that just print ‘CE’ on everything would never ever just print ‘UL’ right next to it.
I like to look up hardware on the FCC database(s) (actually IIRC two commercial shadows of DB).
Lets you look inside, sometimes identify parts.
If they skipped interference testing, they faked all the others.
I saw this video, and took the advice of one of the commenters. I sourced some used Power Distribution Units (PDUs) I found on Facebook Marketplace. Sure, meeting a dude in the parking lot of a Walmart is a little sketchy, but they’re certainly better units than the Harbor Freight ones (which I was very close to buying).
I’ve been in the lucky position of having been gifted PDUs from datacentre and server room refurbs, they’re really decent quality (as you’d expect from a server rack that could have held several hundred thousands of dollars of equipment).
There’s also the desk mounted distribution strips which often get thrown out when offices are refurbed.
Definitely worth keeping an eye on salvage auctions and skips/dumpsters at work when there’s an IT refresh but
I think I’ve only ever bought one thing from Harbor Freight that I didn’t regret, and that was a heat shrink gun. Everything else didn’t last beyond one use, and some not even that. I even had a 20 inch long crowbar that I literally bent with my hands trying to separate two nailed boards … no cheater bar. I had a 2 ton rated worm gear winch that chewed itself to pieces lifting 200 pounds. The crap you can buy there is astounding.
Perhaps esteemed HaD readers can comment on my solution which is to wire an 8 gang electrical box with a 20 amp electrical cord with a GFCI outlet in circuit with regular outlets. Label as maximum 20 amp total. You can get fancy with a master on-off with indicator lamp. I used one today that I put together 35 years ago. Looks industrial. Lasts forever. Works well in my home office that lacks GFCI protection.
That gets you the outlet count, but not the long form factor.
Why would you need (or even want) a GFCI in an office? Nuisance trips on a coffee maker in a kitchen I can live with. Nuisance trips on my computer, not so much.
I do appreciate there is a GFCI in my electronics corner. I’ve designed, built and tested TRIAC based light dimmers using slightly sketchy practices, and having a GFCI does give some ease of mind. In the apartment I live, there is only one GFCI, and it protects nearly every socket in the apartment.
But I do see your point. A while back I had a little accident with a water boiler in the kitchen, the GFCI tripped, which also cut the power from my PC. So I lost some work, and you risk damaging your file system.
I also used an isolation transformer. I’m still confused about those things. With an isolation transformer in the loop, you can electrocute yourself or burn down your electronics corner without the GFCI tripping.
US household AC outlet are 15A max, be mindful of this when making custom power strip. Generally if the outlet doesn’t have one sideway T slot and the breaker aren’t 20A, label the strip 15A max so you don’t forget or your idiot brother-in-law doesn’t try something stupid.
Those “idiot brother-in-law” type of people are unlikely to read or heed such warning labels. On top of that, if you plug in a bunch of appliances, do you even know yourself whether their combined rating is 13A or 18A?
UK plugs must include an integral fuse. I assume the same is true for the other European plugs, but don’t know for sure. It doesn’t matter where you plug your power strip in, because it’s integral fuse prevents you exceeding 13A, whether your fixed wiring is designed for 16A or 32A.
It’s not true for the other european plugs.
A 13 amp fuse will allow a bad connection to create 1500 watts of heat at 120 volts. More than enough to start a fire without blowing the fuse. A short would blow the fuse but a bad connection is much more dangerous and the fuse won’t necessarily save you.
Better yet fuse the whole lot appropriately. Might as well do it right if you’re going to the trouble.
Approach your friendly local sysadmin or hunt surplus auctions for server rack PDUs, they tend to be really well built when you’re relying on them for tens or hundreds of thousands worth of servers and if you’re really lucky you’ll find them with monitoring, individual socket controls and a host of other features built in.
The rack economy is a funny thing. Racks are horribly expensive new, but when a wiring closet is being decomissioned (building is sold or tenant moves out), they’re also expensive to get rid of and you can often have them for the cost of asking (or dumpster diving).
How did single sided earth connection pass UL or equivalent?
Intertek approves! Although it probably doesn’t meet code for permanent wiring as Claugh has modified the outlets to do. In my personal opinion.
In my experience UL is pretty good since they are really working for the insurance industry ( that’s the underwriter part ) and they have to pay if you burn your house down. On common problem is design and material changes that don’t get re-tested. It is not a big surprise that something half the price is half the quality. The spring metal contacts are probably the most expensive material in the whole device. Good stuff costs money.
UL labs is close to me and I have toured there while getting a device tested for the company is worked for. They are the real deal with their testing and they are really aggressive about false use of their mark to the point of blocking importation of falsely marked devices and working with CPSC and lawsuits in the domestic market. UL certification is hard and expensive which is why cheap import stuff is almost never compliant. Mostly in the commercial insurance area some insurance companies will not cover damages from non-UL devices and will send inspectors to check for them. Our company had annual electrical inspections with IR cameras checking switchgear and motors. The office ladies were upset when they threw out all their personal space heaters and coffee mug warmers. BTW did you know that any coffee mugs warmer without a timed shutoff is never UL approved. UL power strips have their contacts tested for resistance after lots of plug-unplug cycles and are measured for pull out force retention.
Harbor Freight sometimes sells the same item with different SKU numbers that come from different suppliers in China, and the quality can vary. If you are lucky, you’ll get one of the good ones. That may be why you may see some happy reviews and some not so happy for the same thing.
I wonder how long it’ll be before someone with one of those power strips has a metal-chassis instrument plugged into it, an internal short to the chassis occurs in the instrument (making it live), and the user’s hands touch the chassis and a good earth ground at the same time.
Hopefully that never happens. But wow, I’d be tossing it in the trash if I owned one.
i like that the article includes my experience…you can buy the cheap garbage at harbor freight, or you can buy the same product as relatively expensive garbage at home depot. i have run into that again and again. these days, unless i know i’ll need a certain quality, i just buy my garbage at the most explicitly-cheap vendor :)
fwiw i’ve been happy with everything i bought at harbor freight. i’m not a very demanding user of many of my tools, so obviously it doesn’t mean much. but i’ve only had good luck. i suspect i was late to the party, because harbor freight didn’t come to my city until about 2020. maybe their quality improved some over time? anyways, the worst experience i had was an extremely inexpensive cement mixer had a significant bolt that kept loosening and eventually had to be replaced. that machine saw a lot of use after the repair.
a lot of things in our lives, if you really inspect them, are of obviously low quality…and yet we use them every day.