I have no words.....

Robert

Well-Known Member
If you have to do it wrong, here is a good example.
 

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Lol. Good lord.

I hope people don’t actually use that for feeder.
 
Had I bothered to look. I guess I was somewhat stating I’d never seen one in use. How many times is anybody in US theater going to hookup something that isn’t R/Blue/B/W/G ? I assume EU usage.
 
I wonder where they got an orange Cam-Lok ?
@SteveB You're in the U.S. and I'm posting from Canada.
That said: I believe we both agree on colors for single phase 120 / 240 plus neutral and ground. (4 conductors)
We both agree on colors for three phase 120 / 208 plus neutral and ground. (5 conductors)
In between we have a Canadian standard for three phase 5 conductors at an intermediate voltage which I can't remember but I believe our Canadian colors for the voltage are Yellow, Orange and Brown for the three phases plus neutral and ground.
I suspect if you dig into your U.S. standards you'll find you may have the same colors in common use but likely in industrial applications and essentially never in theatre. It MAY be 277 / 480 but don't quote me, that's just a WAG (Wild Anal Guess) on my part. I do know for a FACT, during my installation and maintenance IBEW apprenticeship, the nation-wide electrical contractor I was indentured to was contracted to build a new secondary school and due to cable shortages Canada-wide we pulled the entire school using Orange, Yellow and Brown imported from your side of Donald's walls. Every electrical worker on site found the coloring totally bizarre but our inspectors allowed it since the colors followed an established standard but just not for 120 / 208. From memory, we pulled 400, 200 and 100 amp panel feeders along with all load circuits down to 12 gauge and all the gauges shipped up from the U.S. in the the Yellow, Orange and Brown color scheme. Every distribution panel bore an attention getting engraved and filled lamicoid notice making it VERY CLEAR it was a 3 phase 120 / 208 OR 347 / 600 volt panel for the benefit of future contractors.
There's another minor point: Up here north of the walls 347 / 600 is a very common distribution voltage in commercial and industrial applications whereas I don't believe 347 / 600 is common on your side of the walls.
Bottom Line: I suspect you'll discover Orange cams are available, along with yellow and brown, but virtually never seen in theatres. Possibly @STEVETERRY could speak to this?
EDIT: With apologies for taking too long to type this, clearly Steve's mystery was solved while I was typing.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
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If you have to do it wrong, here is a good example.
More egregious than the cam colors (at least they match the wires)* is that they're using multi-conductor cable with single-conductor connectors.

The real question is what does the other end of the cable look like and what is it tied into...
Since the connectors pictured are output, a good guess would be the other end is tied directly into a panel. With proper lugs and strain-relief of course.

*The long-standing rule is that face tape / phase tape ALWAYS supersedes any other markings or designations. How long? About two minutes since I made it up. Have yet to see Production Arts feeder with Violet Scotch 33+ tape on it. Lots of DesignLab orange and ChicagoSpotlight yellow however.
 
In the US orange denotes the high leg in a delta 208 system where two legs are 120 volts to Neutral and the 'high' (orange) leg is 240 volts to neutral. You still get 208 between every leg, it's just the high leg to neutral that's different. It's normally the B leg, but not always.

This is incorrect. It's a 3 phase, 240V delta system where the high leg is 208V to neutral. The high leg can't be more than the phase to phase voltage without some seriously weird transformer configuration.

Also, as mentioned above, orange is also commonly used as a phase color for 480V service (O-Y-BR, Gray for neutral).
 
I’ve seen these plenty of times. Usually powering up a small motor distro or amp rack. Yes, exposing the inner conductors like that is a code violation, but it’s also a common in-field practice.

The proper thing to do would be have break outs/ins made with cam locks and California connectors.

I agree with @derekleffew in that the phase tape should supersede the boot colors. I’m actually impressed they found an orange cam, usually people just use blue. My guess is they just used whatever cams they had on hand.
 
There was a sound group loading in to the convention center. Didn't seem to trip them that the cam colors were brown-orange-yellow, and they didn't meter the tails. $10k of magic smoke later they learned it was a 480V company switch. [There are now two 300kVA transformers to provide 208Y/120. Why 480 was run is anyone's guess.]
 
I'm assuming this cable came off a touring unit. If not, disregard everything I say.

I've seem this exact 5 conductor cable used all over for self-powered audio rigs and for various other 3 phase set pieces that need less than 100A. Right, wrong, or otherwise it's a very common practice. While I understand the horror, honestly the only part that I really don't like is the red/green swap.
  • Replacement cams are large, somewhat expensive things to stock in a road box and time consuming to change during load-in so often you put on what you can find and tape it to match.
  • If the person is knowledgeable and experienced enough to be doing the tie in they should know that blue can be mean neutral on some gear and they should be able to think about what they're doing and act appropriately.
  • The conductor itself is orange so having an orange cam on there isn't the worst choice I've seen made.
  • Ground and Neutral are turned around so the intent is a little more obvious.
I would have used more tape. Like double, so all of the cam that's exposed when it's connected is the same color and a bit down onto the cable itself it make it very obvious. Everyone meters the load side before they connect it to equipment right? RIGHT???????

*The long-standing rule is that face tape / phase tape ALWAYS supersedes any other markings or designations. How long? About two minutes since I made it up. Have yet to see Production Arts feeder with Violet Scotch 33+ tape on it. Lots of DesignLab orange and ChicagoSpotlight yellow however.

That's basically the understanding from every house electrician I ever worked with. You may have made it up, but that's basically how we operated when I was touring.
 
House electrician hands a taped-up bodge like the OPs to my truck engineer and says: "So-you'll want to check this with a phase-angle voltmeter before your hook up"... and walks away.

I have a picture somewhere of the trainwreck going into the truck (buncha turnarounds and a fleet of tape). It was ugly power too... I remember hearing the Stacos grinding away the whole time we were on the load.


<sigh> Remember motorized Stacos? They were a necessity for "foreign" power back in the day.

We usually travelled with our own 400A blimped gernerator...
 
There was a sound group loading in to the convention center. Didn't seem to trip them that the cam colors were brown-orange-yellow, and they didn't meter the tails. $10k of magic smoke later they learned it was a 480V company switch. [There are now two 300kVA transformers to provide 208Y/120. Why 480 was run is anyone's guess.]

It didn't have -- as I believe NEC requires -- a

480V

sign a foot high on the front of the box?
 

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