Does this electrical wiring work?

[hansyolo]

Yes, DefyG, you are absolutly right. This was my mistake! I thougth that it is a "general" icon used for any kind of consumer, however it is the icon of a light

 

[Lucien Nunes]

There is a safety issue with the connectors being used bi-directionally, i.e. where any connector might be used as an inlet or an outlet. This is not normally acceptable for domestic equipment because even if the internal connectors are suitable for either side (pins or receptacles) to be live, there is the possibility of connecting two supply cables together. I.e. suppose one Schuko feed cable is powering one pair of boxes and another is attached to the second pair. Then interconnect the two pairs of boxes and the second Schuko plug pins become live.

To prevent this, connectors on modular equipment are normally either power-in or power-out and the two are not interchangeable. E.g. with Neutrik Powercon, although the male and female are both sufficiently shrouded to allow either to be the source, there is a power-in version (blue) and a power-out version (grey) with different keys to prevent them being interconnected.

 

[westward10]

Good spot I thought the only male/female connectors were at the sockets.

 

[hansyolo]

Hi, thanks for your explanation, however I must admit that I am still trying to understand the problem you mention.

Edit: The Snap In will be Female only. For all other connectors (blue ones) we will use a male connector. Does this solve the problem`?

 

[Lucien Nunes]

No, that is exactly the root of the problem. In some positions power is flowing from male to female and in others female to male. Clearly with a normal household plug such as Schuko it is not acceptable to have power coming out of the male as the exposed metal pins would be live. But your non-directional use of connectors allows that to happen, if two input cables are attached to interconnected sections of furniture by mistake.

The normal method would be to have an inlet (male) and an outlet (female) connector mounted at each position, and interconnection cables with male and female ends. E.g. with IEC 60320 the cable feeding power into an appliance has a C13 socket connector that mates with a C14 inlet, then to loop the power back out a cable with a type E plug connector is inserted into a type F outlet.

 

[hansyolo]

Thanks Lucien Nunes! Yes, you are right, by this setup I have the problem that some of the male connections (with free and open contacts) will be exposed.

Simply because I am using a Male to Male "Bridge" to connection one box to another. It always seems like it is a trade-off between modularity and the possibility to wire up the boxes.

Does anyone have a smart solution for that, without sacrifizing the option to connect any box by all four corners?

 

[DPG]

How often are you going to be moving these 'blocks' around?

 

[Lucien Nunes]

If you want up to four possible input positions on each box, one system would be to wire up as you have at the moment, but use the existing female Wago ports only as outlets. Fit a snap-in male inlet at each corner but wire all four separately to a selector switch, from which the output feeds into the existing wiring. There are strict technical requirements for the type of switches that may be used, to avoid the unused inlets becoming live in the event of switch malfunction. The switch would likely be fairly expensive. The input selection could be made automatic using relays, again with technical requirements to prevent unused inlets becomeing live.

You could avoid the selector switch by an alternative scheme of wiring, with a disadvantage of many extra connectors in a chain and with them the increased risk of the safety earth connection being broken somewhere along the chain. The idea would be to wire each corner of each box as a separate, identical unit with parallel-connected male snap-in inlet, female snap-in outlet, appliance outlets and a cable to the next corner where it terminates in a cable-mounted female. Normally, the cable-females would be plugged into the snap-in males, to make a complete ring. To power the box, the female cable connector would be disconnected from the snap-in inlet and the supply cable attached instead, from which all corners of the box are then powered by the (now broken) ring. The jumper cable to the next box can be taken from any corner as all snap-in females are now powered.

I think the number of connectors in this confguration is a genuine concern and would not really recommend it. With four boxes plugged in the least favourable layout, there could be 19 pluggable connectors between the main supply cable and the last appliance outlet.

 

[moose]

Red box is one wago snap in. Then. It will all go bang. You need three wago all separate. one for each live/Neutral/CPC. I see you need an electrician to do it correctly.

Good luck

 

[DefyG]

You need three wago all separate. one for each live/Neutral/C

I think the OP is aware of that, see box with 3x in! (221's)