 So the brother word processor is taking longer to finish up than I thought due to various issues So let's talk about mains plugs Now I'm British and in Britain We use these This is a UK plug possibly one of the best designed plugs in the world not a time biased or anything It is polarized meaning that the appliance knows which of the pins is live which one is neutral It's Earth's although this particular plug is not you can see that the earth being here is Plastic and it's fused the fuse lives in this shutter here This allows you to use a lower rated wire Than the main system normally allows and you'll be safe from fires if a partial short circuit in the appliance Causes more current drawer than the wire is rated for So this is designed for a double insulated device. It doesn't use a lot of current That's why you can get away with a plastic earth pin because there's no earth on this end to connect to Now I'm British, but I live in Switzerland Switzerland uses these This is a polarized non fused plug. This is from a batch that I bought from a DIY shop to put on various appliances like the British stuff I have that I brought to Switzerland It doesn't have a fuse unlike the British one It is still polarized because the off-center earth pin here means that the appliance always knows Which of these two pins is live and which is neutral However, Switzerland being in the heart of Europe, although it's not actually in Europe. It is inside Europe is Surrounded by other countries, so you also get these This is a shuko plug or to be more accurate. This is a combination shuko and some other standard plug Shuko is what they use in Germany. This shuko uses two non polarized pins here and earth in These slots the plug can be inserted either way up. So the appliance does not know which is live In France, however, they use a very similar plug But it doesn't have these two earth bits here instead. There is a pin sticking out of the socket That goes into this hole Thus providing you with a polarized plug I'll show more of this in a moment. This of course is not fused You also get these This is Italian This is non polarized because these three pins are all in a row and can be inserted either way up it's subtly different from the Swiss one and you also get You also get where did I put it? Here you go. You also get these This is a euro plug. The euro plug is a horrible compromise That allows you to produce appliances that you can plug in in most European countries now you notice that these two pins here Sloping in towards each other. It's easier to see if I hold it up next to something like the Italian plug that's because This pin spacing in all the various countries is not quite the same so this The pins are slightly flexible Thus allowing you to insert one of these into a German socket a French socket a Swiss socket and Italian socket But not a British socket because the British are special So what I'm getting out here is we have a lot of plugs and as a result we have adapters and Normally adapters look like this This is a big chunky travel adapter that I got from work for traveling with it's got a bunch of slide-out pins here for various countries, so this is for Switzerland and Italy and that they lock in place that you have to press this button before they'll collapse in This one is I think this one's Australia with the angled pins This one of course is the United Kingdom and you see does have a metal earth pin and This one is the United States and probably associated countries. I Am being very Eurocentric here There are many other countries in the world that use versions of all of these And I don't know anything about them, so I'm not going to talk about them on this side We have a socket with lots of holes Which will take most of these plugs? So this is the Euro plug it goes in through these holes and you notice that it's not a very good fit You just have to push hard It goes in We've got Italian does the same thing we've got unpolarized French and German oh Look that won't go in because these pins are too thick for these holes. This is a good thing I'll show you in a moment you've got UK and And that's actually the lot however you can also do this This reveals a familiar looking combination of shuko French socket plug rather With a corresponding socket here, this then allows you to plug in the combination shuko plug and Get a unpolarized but earthed output does not allow you to plug in the polarized French plug Because there is no corresponding earth pin sticking out here Which I think is a bit of an oversight, but anyway These have the downside of being expensive and very big so you can also get these this is Supplied with appliances in Switzerland What this is is a adapter from the French style To the Swiss style so you can see here. It's got an earth pin that goes in the hole of the plug and It pushes on like this, and I'm only going to go that's far because This is a permanent adapter It doesn't come off again or at least it doesn't unless you pull very hard and Risks spilling your tea There we go It's permanent because there are teeth in these holes Which grab onto these pins so that once you've pushed it on you can't get it off again So that's how you're supposed to do it However, you also get the other kind of adapter These tend to come from grey markets in porters Because you're buying from outside the country You're not governed by the electrical regulations of the country you're buying into and these look like this These are colloquially known as death dafters for reasons that will become apparent I've had these for ages at the bottom of a drawer and you recently dug them out and decided to have a look at them It's kind of a good thing I did This was actually pretty well made this as you can see it's got a UK plug on one side and a huge array of holes here for other types of plugs so I can stick a Swiss one in I can Swiss a that was my multimeter, sorry a Euro plug in I can stick a shuko in with difficulty Notice how there is no earth connection whatsoever even though there is an earth pin here And now the big difference you'll see if you compare the good adapter with the death dafter is the death dafter has much bigger holes and It doesn't have any shutters where did I put my screwdriver here the shutters Open when you push a pin in But resist People who should know better or people who are too young to know better from pushing stuff like cutlery into the holes For a safety purpose now these don't have shutters So In goes the spoon, which is brilliant They also because they're physically smaller they don't have this Plastic shroud around the socket and that's there for a reason that is there. That's the wrong kind of plug to stop you from Plugging in Okay, that's not a very good example the shutter is stopping me plug you plug that in there But in general it's to stop you doing really stupid things like this or This this one is great because this is actually connecting the Which pin is that that's live? I believe yes, that's live Live here to the earth connection. This was a Earthed appliance then the outer chassis of the device would now be live which is superb This one is actually got a fuse which is a step up, but Even though these things are designed shoddily they are also made shoddily this one is a French German shuko output adapter and if I get out the multimeter it was beeping earlier Come on Beep Okay, so this is Detecting if a circuit is made so let us test these pins So that's connected these two pins That's connected and now let's test earth shall we oh look There's no beep. Why is there no beep? There's no beep because the earth pin Which should go from these metal contacts here and from this thing here for when you're in France to The combined earth pins in these four holes here It's not actually connected In fact, it's supposed to be connected. It's just really badly made if I connect here and I push this all the way in Does actually make connection but if I Plug something in I'm using the other depth after just for convenience and then check for an earth connection You get nothing that's because Only the metal at the very bottom of this hole is actually hooked up to earth and This pins just not long enough. It doesn't go in far enough to make contact with the actual contacts and This one also has other problems such as the fact that these monster holes designed to take huge numbers of different adapters this one will take I Think this one is hang on. I've got this I can try it So we've got American which should go in but it's not because Yes, but just because this is badly made and there's some bent contacts inside So stroke of luck there. Yeah, we've tried British What about Australia and does that go in? Yes, it does, but I have no idea whether it's meant to I I Can probably try to get these through the shutters somehow Probably try to see if there's any contact made Okay, I'm not actually sure whether I'm doing that right, but Hang on I can do it like this. So that opens the shutters properly. So That's connected That's connected, but of course we won't get any earth Yep And the last one was sweet. We've just tried sweet. So, yeah And in fact this demonstrates another problem Which is these things are so badly made that they don't really make very good mechanical Contact so that for example if I stick this euro plug in That's not really what you want out of a mains plug And in fact while I was testing this one earlier One of the I think it was the neutral pin this one Wasn't can wasn't registering But then I plugged lots of stuff in and out of it and it started again So I must have moved something inside. Oh look and now the earth stopped working on this one as well Yeah, that's fantastic So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bust these things open they glued together and See just how badly made they are on the inside. So I use the multi grips of power to Break the seal on this one and now this plastic piece comes off This is the slightly better made one of the pair. So this now exposes the Brass contacts. Let's have a little bit of zoom actually Okay, so These things are Not actually fastened on with anything. They just push in place and there's a friction fit the actual electrical contact is Making trying to make sure I'm still in focus this little piece Wait a minute. No, that's plastic Wait, where is the electrical contact? No wonder it was wasn't working very well The electrical contact is here this metal piece just Friction fits on against this which is a Shoddily bent piece of brass It doesn't even push firmly into place It just sort of sits So if this moves a millimeter or so in each direction, it'll stop making contact. Oh, and this one's just loose This is probably the one that wasn't working before That's got to be a fault. It's not it's not you can't possibly supposed to do that. This pin Is not sprung but that is the connection to this Actually, it's slightly more complicated than that. So let's just pull the Fuse out. Yeah This is the neutral pin. This is the live pin So this gets routed to here through the fuse and then up the other side to here so this would just have Been pressing Loosely Against that metal pin there and the whole thing would have been held in by How did this go in? this by this Which like on this side, it doesn't go in at all Firmly It just sits and then this glued-in piece here would have actually done the work of holding it all together Wow First time I've actually done this. I knew these things were bad. I didn't know they were that bad this is the Earth piece This pushes up against this pin here. None of these are sprung. This one does at least have this bump here Which should push against the The earth pin Yeah, I would expect any non terrible adapter to you know at least have you know screws or rivets or something holding it all together rather than just Chants See this This is the bit that people see this has been heat-stakes on this side. That's what these things are. They are Black pegs that go through holes in the brass that has then been flattened down with a hot iron They actually work pretty well. This is a rivet That rivet will then go through probably to a pin up on this side Yes, I'm smashing it up. I'm never going to use this again So what's Oh, oh, this is not held in by anything again. Well, it was just kind of pushed into place Uh There we go. There's the other side of that rivet. So this Wasn't really being held in by anything much Wow Okay, well that was terrible the fuse works And it's a 13 amp fuse Do not push 13 amps through one of these adapters. You will regret it. And so will anyone else living in the same building So there's this one Let's just try smashing this open on camera and if that doesn't work, I'll take it offline So I'm trying to get some focus and That Was easier than it should really be So what's this got in it? Now this is slightly different. This has actual screws These will probably connect down to what's ever's Underneath now the thing that was wrong with this was that these pieces here Were not making electrical contact with the flat piece of metal that you can see down there So let's just verify this Let's get them meter in the right setting as that beeps Okay, it's making contact now, but that's presumably because I wrenched the thing about by Uh Opening it in a rather crude fashion Does this pop out I think This is all one piece of metal. I don't know if that's visible, but if you can see it moving The rivet down there, which is connecting it to the earth stuff isn't tight. So there's some slack And I bet that in one position It doesn't make electrical contact Or maybe That's not a rivet It's just a Nail trying to find the focus point Uh It's not a screw It's got a Some kind of bushing on the bottom But that probably explains why this doesn't work Wow Okay, what about these? These are fastened in presumably with these screws. So let's just take these off Yeah, I should not have been able to just pull that I have to say Again wrenching it about it's probably not done any of the Any of the mechanical Structures in this thing much good, but I didn't wrench it about that much Okay, so These brass pieces just screw on That's okay Screws aren't the greatest particularly given these screws are supposed to be drawing or carrying all the current I think you're supposed to be using Uh Rivets or crimping for this sort of thing But I don't see how to get the rest open. This is all one piece So it took a while and I did end up having to shred it with the multi-graze But this is what the inside looks like and it's actually slightly better than I was expecting This is Is it ceramic? Oh, hang on. It just pushes out. Cool This is the actual thing that plugs into the mains It's Not ceramic, but it's some kind of hard plastic. It's better than the rest of this stuff So these three well these two screws Screw on here and transfer the current up to the top half of the adapter This very dubious looking thing or whatever it is Pushes into this metal crimp cup Like that Like it just it literally it just pushes in there's no screw thread or anything. That's really really sucky uh This metal piece Which is the shuko style outer For the earth just clips on come off again Uh, oh, so if you can hear any funny noises, it's because right now Switzerland is getting or at least my bit of switzerland regular big thunderstorms every night in the summer And that it's probably what you're hearing So what we've got here is These two pieces connect to german contacts This cup here Connects to french contacts And the whole thing Goes into this Horrible Friction fit Nail That's uh, I think This one is the worst But this this is also the worst so, um I was going to try and come up with some kind of snappy conclusion to all this But the conclusion is pretty obvious, which is if you get one of these with an appliance throw it away Go and get a proper adapter whatever your country is equivalent of one of these is Or one of these Or what I normally do, uh, which is to simply buy some local plugs, where did I put the Swiss one Like this and then I take a uk multi adapter Chop the the plug off the wire and put this on instead So then I get proper Sockets for plugging my uk appliances into And a proper plug for plugging into the swiss wall But these things Yeah, they they suck just throw them away. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this rant Please let me know what you think in the comments Yeah, I reckon that fuse just doesn't work At least anymore