CeeForm or Cam-lok?

@tjrobb Up here north of the walls we see very little 277 / 480 outside of steel mills that utilize American equipment.
We have 120 / 208 everywhere you do on your side of the walls then we jump to 347 / 600 not only for larger motors but for fluoresents in office towers as well since 12 gauge copper on 20 amp breakers can run so many more fixtures per circuit at 347. We even have device boxes with slightly different mounting centres for 347 volt switches in an attempt to keep well intentioned amateurs from replacing 347 volt switches with normal 120 / 240 volt switches. We also have 1110 boxes with 347 volt device centers and only two 1/2 knock-outs. We also have single gang blank covers with 347 volt device centers to cover single gang 347 volt back boxes.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
I'm south of the Tim Horton's wall, so what I'm used to is 480V. Crazy Canadians...
 
Another vote for Cam-Lok, preferably one on each side of the stage, with their own adjacent disconnects.
Which brings up another point. Should we fill our stage boxes with True1 or stick with PowerCon or edison? What is the best way to get non-dimmed power to the ETC Source 4 Lustrs we will be purchasing? They are still the old PowerCon, so coming from a non-dimmed circuit of twistlock and converting to PowerCon? (Probably by way of setting our ETC Smartpacks to Non-dim?)
If you're looking for soca fan outs I'd recommend either L6-20 for 208v (then converting from L6-20 to whatever your load prefers) or True one for 120v, since you already use L5-20 for dimmed circuits. 208v will of course let you string more lights together then 120v, which can be nice, and I prefer true1 over regular powercon as it's disconnect rated and natively M/F, so you don't need to keep track of extension couplers if you pull a fixture or for longer runs. You could use edison, but I've seen (and caused) plenty of melted or crispy specimens to see the benefit of standardized 20A rated connector families.
 
Just looked it up and the True1 did pass UL cert, so technically it's more viable than the old blue powerCON was for stage box installation. Maybe @BillConnerFASTC knows? Are people installing True1 for new installs?
I am not, but largely because I use and see a lot of ETC and they don't - it would be a True1 to PowerCON for first fixture, and then PowerCON jumpers. I'm sure the day will come - but I only have a few more projects to get out the door and I'm done! (2 in next couple of weeks, one end of summer, and I'm guessing one never because of fundraising not going well - so just 3 and soon 1.)
 
@IanTech In my shop days (Early 1990's) we built all of the 9 pin ball machines for 'Tommy' four times and the entire production twice.
[...]
A year later we built all of 'Tommy' again, for London, England this time. For this production we packaged the 24 AC servo drives as six physically smaller racks housing four drives per rack and powered each rack with smaller Cam-loks. We provided a matching distro fed by five bare-ended Cam-lok tails. The British had no problems dealing with this.

When are we gonna write the book, Ron?
 
When are we gonna write the book, Ron?
@Jay Ashworth "Tommy" had six AC servo motivated full width tracks housed within its show deck positioned as two DS, two MS and two US. The visible portion of the deck was approximately 40' with the tracks spanning 60', 10' into each wing. We were told one of each pair had to carry 12 x 20 amp circuits with the second of each pair only six. The slots in the show deck were approximately 7/8". In order for the mice to carry 12 circuits we had to design and manufacture our own custom connectors and have them approved by TUV for Germany, once our custom connectors were approved by TUV the Brits barely looked at them. Our custom connectors were approximately 3/4" x 10" with each female housing 19 contacts exactly the size of a standard grounded stage pin. The first circuit of each track accommodated a standard grounded stage pin male. Our contacts were 12 hots (4 from each of 3 phases) 4 neutrals and 3 grounds for a total of 19 contacts. We wired all six tracks for 12 circuits in case they decreed a change post building / delivery / installation. Each mouse was fed via drag chain from the SR end of each track. One of each pair also carried a tiny AC servo rotator within the mouse. The dimmed circuits were powered via two flat yellow festoon cables typically employed to control overhead gantry cranes. The three tracks with the little AC servo controlled rotators also carried shielded 4 x 12 gauge bridge power for the AC servo, a shielded multi pair for the resolver a smaller cable for mechanical (fail safe) limits and one more cable for LVDC operated mechanical brakes, applied by springs and released by LVDC. Our custom multi-pin connectors were machined from blocks of phenolic, dusty / messy stuff to machine but durable and more than adequately rated.
In one of the biggest moves of the production six pinball machines came on stage simultaneously, three from each wing. The simplest move was tracking on a garbage pail, another simple move was a single floor lamp for an apartment scene. One of the US tracks motivated the largest / heaviest, pyro-belching machine, the machine Tommy rides when he's whipping the machine into submission. In this case the drag chain also carried cable for the Pyro-Pack pyro'. Our tracks were motivated by Emerson Electric's 4120 AC servo's, we had a total of 8 4120's in each production with all of the other AC servos being somewhat smaller motors.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
As I am situated in Europe (or rather Scandinavia) I might not be of much help in the debate what to use in US.

But had a chuckle as it is the first time I have heard the term CEE-Form, as we normally just use the term CEE (or shortly CE) when speaking about them. :)
 
@Jay Ashworth "Tommy" had six AC servo motivated full width tracks housed within its show deck positioned as two DS, two MS and two US. The visible portion of the deck was approximately 40' with the tracks spanning 60', 10' into each wing. We were told one of each pair had to carry 12 x 20 amp circuits with the second of each pair only six. The slots in the show deck were approximately 7/8". In order for the mice to carry 12 circuits we had to design and manufacture our own custom connectors and have them approved by TUV for Germany, once our custom connectors were approved by TUV the Brits barely looked at them. Our custom connectors were approximately 3/4" x 10" with each female housing 19 contacts exactly the size of a standard grounded stage pin. The first circuit of each track accommodated a standard grounded stage pin male. Our contacts were 12 hots (4 from each of 3 phases) 4 neutrals and 3 grounds for a total of 19 contacts. We wired all six tracks for 12 circuits in case they decreed a change post building / delivery / installation. Each mouse was fed via drag chain from the SR end of each track. One of each pair also carried a tiny AC servo rotator within the mouse. The dimmed circuits were powered via two flat yellow festoon cables typically employed to control overhead gantry cranes. The three tracks with the little AC servo controlled rotators also carried shielded 4 x 12 gauge bridge power for the AC servo, a shielded multi pair for the resolver a smaller cable for mechanical (fail safe) limits and one more cable for LVDC operated mechanical brakes, applied by springs and released by LVDC. Our custom multi-pin connectors were machined from blocks of phenolic, dusty / messy stuff to machine but durable and more than adequately rated.
In one of the biggest moves of the production six pinball machines came on stage simultaneously, three from each wing. The simplest move was tracking on a garbage pail, another simple move was a single floor lamp for an apartment scene. One of the US tracks motivated the largest / heaviest, pyro-belching machine, the machine Tommy rides when he's whipping the machine into submission. In this case the drag chain also carried cable for the Pyro-Pack pyro'. Our tracks were motivated by Emerson Electric's 4120 AC servo's, we had a total of 8 4120's in each production with all of the other AC servos being somewhat smaller motors.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

:O custom connectors for power, I wouldn't go near those except with a wooden stick! I've heard too many stories even with just Edison. on 20amp

I'm thinking:
L5-20 for 120 and L6-20 for 240, Cams for 3phase to the dimmer from the company switch, and socas with True1 and Twist fan-outs. No stage pin here. (I know the majority here love it, but I don't like pin splitting). But seriously, that's not the reason we're not doing stage pin, it's just that every circuit in the building is L5-20.


We have some monitors in one of our extended venues that is L21-30, in the same venue we have CM Lodestars (permanent - side note I know this isn't ideal and they always recommend dead hanging motors, but this was installed before I got here and they dont want to change it) on L5-20. Earlier it was said to go L21-30 for these? Should I change them to that or find another Twist so we don't confuse the monitors with the motor power?
 
There's no sense in installing a three phase connector for a single phase motor, particularly since it presumably is on a single phase circuit and doing so would mean running more wires and changing out the breakers and all sorts of extra work.

What exactly are these "monitors" you speak of? Offhand I can't think of anything with that name that would generally require three phase power: neither for audio nor video. If you aren't using these connectors for three phase AC power, my suggestion would be to change out the monitor connectors for something more suitable/standard for their application; for instance, speakOn connectors for monitor loudspeakers. I'm generally wary of using NEMA standard connectors for anything other than power.
 
:O custom connectors for power, I wouldn't go near those except with a wooden stick! I've heard too many stories even with just Edison. on 20amp

I'm thinking:
L5-20 for 120 and L6-20 for 240, Cams for 3phase to the dimmer from the company switch, and socas with True1 and Twist fan-outs. No stage pin here. (I know the majority here love it, but I don't like pin splitting). But seriously, that's not the reason we're not doing stage pin, it's just that every circuit in the building is L5-20.


We have some monitors in one of our extended venues that is L21-30, in the same venue we have CM Lodestars (permanent - side note I know this isn't ideal and they always recommend dead hanging motors, but this was installed before I got here and they dont want to change it) on L5-20. Earlier it was said to go L21-30 for these? Should I change them to that or find another Twist so we don't confuse the monitors with the motor power?
@IanTech @Jay Ashworth (and @ those playing along at home.)
The six slots in the finished surface of 'Tommy's' show deck spanned approximately 60 feet by 7/8" wide. The six gaps had to be as narrow as possible to accommodate dancers and non-automated rolling props. On our side of the pond, a 12 circuit 20 amp 120 volt connector would be a 37 contact Pyle-National. A 6 circuit 20 amp 120 volt connector would be a Socapex, Veam or compatible.
For Tommy Germany we had to accommodate a combination of 120 volt and 230 volt 20 amp circuits. The plugs could be any length parallel to the direction of travel but needed to fit within the 7/8" gap with clearance. We looked at Amphenol, Cannon, ELCO /EDAC and others before giving up and designing / fabricating our own prototype to send to TUV for testing. TUV had a multitude of queries but neither the German producer, nor any of the three shops he was considering using, had anything better to offer which fulfilled all of the requirements.
Additional considerations:
The un-mated female connectors could NOT protrude above the surface of the finished show deck; being recessed 1/4" was desirable.
Due to the blocking of the performances, it had to be possible to traverse any / all of the six mice the full 60' travel of the tracks WITHOUT causing any problems for any / all non-automated props and / or singing and dancing performers. Since the German production's final blocking was months from being finalized we chose to wire all six tracks for 12 circuits.
The mating male connectors carried 1 to 12 grounded circuits, needed to be polarized plus quick and convenient to mate and unplug during the frenzied / break-neck pace of the productions, rehearsals and performances.
Fabricating the male connectors only large enough to carry as many circuits as required by any particular electrified prop' was another serious plus from the perspective of manufacturing costs, machining time, physical size, weight, mating / un-mating speed / force required and ULTRA-STURDY cable clamps.
All of the above requirements led to our decision to design / fabricate our own connectors then have TUV run their gamut of tests.
The actual pin and sleeve contacts were purchased in bulk from Pin-Tech, an established U.S. company who were somewhat amused and confused by our order for FAR more male pins and comparatively few female sockets. This was early in 1995. Pin-Tech had no problem remembering us when when duplicated our order for London, England in 1996, nope, barely blinked at our second order.
That's my saga of the custom built 12 circuit connectors and I'm sticking to it.
Epilogue: Part one; The German producer had three different shops bidding to supply the dimmers and lighting. All three shops utilized the same 6 circuit connectors BUT all three shops wired their connectors differently and incompatibly. Imagine if all North American shops used Socapex / VEAM but each used different / electrically incompatible pin-outs. Due to the trans-ocean shipping time, we had to ship all of our track circuits sans mating connectors as the German producer hadn't decided on his supplier thus their required mating pin-outs.
Bummer but we did our best.
Epilogue: Part two; 'Tommy's' North American lighting designer and his associates designed their production to run on an ETC (what the heck was ETC's LP90 killer called, my memory's failing me at the moment?) [ The ETC Obsession! (thank you Google!)] and 440+ dimmers of two wattages. Many of their lighting fixtures of choice were only available for 120 volt operation. In North America we'd expect to find a few 48 or 96 dimmer touring racks.
NOPE! That'd be too easy. When the German producer, who normally produced touring rock concerts, finally decided upon his supplier of choice imagine our surprise at finding a small mountain of battle encased 6 and 12 dimmer packs waiting in the DSR dimmer room.
The surprises weren't over yet. The dimmers were the rental company's own design. They were nice enough in a rock 'n roll / Friday night bar band sort of way but their way of dealing with 120 volt filaments was "interesting" to be polite.
Each of the mountain of dimmer packs bore a four position rotary selector switch clearly labelled "230 volt rock", "230 volt theatre", "120 volt rock" and "120 volt theatre". The dimmers were based on dual SCR's, who knew about IGBT's in 1995?
When the "Voltage selector switch" was set for:
"230 volt rock" each pack put out line voltage with rapid response time.
"230 volt theatre" put out line voltage with a slower, ramped, response time.
The serious filament killer was:
"120 volt rock"
put out 230 volt with the first half of each sine wave delayed to read 120 RMS on your trusty Fluke RMS meter.
"120 volt theatre" similarly triggered 120 volts RMS with a delayed response time.
The show's lighting designers were livid but their protests fell on deaf ears; possibly deafened by too many weekends in German beer gardens.
120 volt filaments had radically shortened life spans and died spectacularly, especially during the show's many driving rock numbers.
Tommy Germany was fun times. Tommy London was so much more civilized but my associates complained loud and long about the Brit's warm beer and unbending last calls. At least the German's knew how to serve cold beer 'till sunrise.
Epilogue: Part three; each of the small mountain of gleaming, newly built, custom dimmer packs had a two pole GFI main breaker and the packs were sourced to approximately equally load the three phases.
Oh how fast those GFI's tripped if / when the designers ran chases spread across multiple packs with a given chase pulling power partially from one pack and partially from a different pack or two.
Associate LD Dave Grill had appreciably less hair by the time we hit opening night.
EDIT 1: Added an inadvertently omitted comma.
EDIT 2: Added name of ETC's Obsession console (Thank you Google!)
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
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There's no sense in installing a three phase connector for a single phase motor, particularly since it presumably is on a single phase circuit and doing so would mean running more wires and changing out the breakers and all sorts of extra work.

What exactly are these "monitors" you speak of? Offhand I can't think of anything with that name that would generally require three phase power: neither for audio nor video. If you aren't using these connectors for three phase AC power, my suggestion would be to change out the monitor connectors for something more suitable/standard for their application; for instance, speakOn connectors for monitor loudspeakers. I'm generally wary of using NEMA standard connectors for anything other than power.

I know kinda weird. Maybe the connector is being used for single phase power? The speakers are renkus heinz PN121 and Meyer UPQ. In all honesty, that room isn't directly under my responsibility so I haven't spent a lot of time looking through that system. I could be wrong...
 
I know kinda weird. Maybe the connector is being used for single phase power? The speakers are renkus heinz PN121 and Meyer UPQ. In all honesty, that room isn't directly under my responsibility so I haven't spent a lot of time looking through that system. I could be wrong...
It's bad practice to use a Listed connector for a different purpose and it's likely a Code violation, too.

"Back in the day..." I worked in a SF Bay area audio/lighting shop that reversed the gender between lighting and speaker cables so one could not send 20 amps of 120v to a loudspeaker. Back then the Hubbel twist locks were cheaper than Cannon's EP series connectors... the cost of EPs was one of the competitive reasons Neutrik developed the Speak-On, IIRC.
 
It's bad practice to use a Listed connector for a different purpose and it's likely a Code violation, too.

"Back in the day..." I worked in a SF Bay area audio/lighting shop that reversed the gender between lighting and speaker cables so one could not send 20 amps of 120v to a loudspeaker. Back then the Hubbel twist locks were cheaper than Cannon's EP series connectors... the cost of EPs was one of the competitive reasons Neutrik developed the Speak-On, IIRC.

I know an arena that uses dual-ballast fixtures and a customized NEMA plug; it's a repurposed common configuration though which one escapes me. Two phase, two neutral, ground. Someday there's going to be a very confused (hopefully not injured) electrician. And no, the phases aren't common-trip breakers.
 
Generally in Europe, red connectors are three phase, blue are single phase, and yellow are low voltage.

The color of a CEE plug indicates the voltage, not the number of phases:
  • Red indicates 400 volt (often still called a 380 because that was the voltage years ago)
  • Blue indicates 230 volt (was 220)
  • Yellow indicates 110-120 volt
The most common type of red connector contains five pins, a ground, a neutral, and one pin for each phase. There are four pin connectors that don't contain a neutral, but generally, they are only used with motors. There are also six pin connectors, which contain two neutrals (sometimes used with big dimmer packs or other devices that can cause phase shift), but they are extremely rare, and you will have trouble to find a plug for them. A red connector with three pins contains a single phase, a ground a neutral. This connector type is also extremely rare; single phase cables in 400 volt are rarely needed.

For blue connectors, the three pin single phase connector containing a phase, a ground and a neutral is the most common. But there exists also a four pin connector containing three phases and a ground. These are used in a delta configuration and don't contain a neutral for that reason. They are marked in blue because the voltage between the phases is only 230 volt. These connectors can be found in some parts of Belgium.

Yellow connectors are extremely rare in Europe. You can find them sometimes on the interconnection between two acl bars. The first bar is connected 230 volt, and contains four acl bulbs wired in series, and an output connector (yellow), that is also wired in series. Another bar contains a yellow input connector and four acl bulbs which are wired in series. This allows the wiring of eight acl bulbs in series, so that they can be used with 230 volt. The interconnection between the bars is yellow because the four acl bulbs of the first bar are already halving the voltage. But acl bars are becoming rare these days.
 

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