Question about Anderson PowerPoles

[jwhite]

Originally Posted by adciv

I'd like to know how that happened. By any chance was it in a block of 4 or otherwise covered/insulated?

I don't recall the details. We were not grouping in blocks, so I don't think it was that.

It was in the waning hours before bag day, so we didn't have time to really triage it.

My instinct was just like others here; that it should be safe. But my recollection is that a programming or mechanical error caused us to push max current through a CIM for an extended period of time (perhaps 5-10 seconds, not minutes). When I was brought over, I saw the cause of the max current, and then saw a slightly melted powerpole housing. As I investigated, I realized that the students had done a small amount of the wiring with 14, and then I also realized that I had bought '30A' poles for all our wiring.

I recall feeling that I was not certain that the 30A poles were the cause of the melting, but that I could not honorably rule it out either.

(And yes, to Jon's point, it would have been much easier to leave it alone; the inspectors would never have noticed. And it took us easily 5 minutes to explain why the 30A breakers to the inspector that day...)

Cheers,

Jeremy