atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information bell system ks8740 soldering iron

just picked up one of these and it has a two prong plug.....with one plug rotated 90 degrees to the other. is this a DC iron made to use off the linemen's truck? guy I bought it from says it works but looks like he twisted the odd prong to make it fit a household outlet. I've seen other bell irons that worked off a transformer. Dad had one of these, but I do not remember the plug looking like this one.

Measure the resistance. From that you can see what voltage it was designed to work off of.

-Hal

Sometimes a plug like that is designed to be plugged into a 20 amp outlet.

The link below doesn't give a voltage but it does give some information as to the use. I never saw a DC iron but that's not to say there wasn't one.


https://xy3.com/bsp/pdf/069-140-811.pdf

ahh, happy to have joined this forum. ttech is right...we have a 2-20r style plug for 20 amp receptacles. I'll just have to install a new 5-20r outlet. the original 20 foot power cord also led me into thinking it was designed for outdoor use. thanks for everything, guys!

I must be missing something. Why would a 95-watt soldering iron be fitted with a 20A plug when a regular 15A plug will fit a 15 or 20A receptacle?

Typical Telco overkill?

At GTE we ran 60 Amp circuits in free air with 2/0 AWG wiring. According to the National Electrical Code #6 was acceptable for use in conduit and we probably could have gone to #8 in free air.

I just realized you're across the pond and these figures might not mean anything. If they don't make sense (and you're interested) let me know and I'll try to get the UK conversions.

But the point was the Telcos here (at least ATT & GTE overbuilt EVERYTHING they touched.)

Also by putting on a 20 Amp plug they forced you to only use 20 Amp circuits.

Sam

I'm familiar with American wire sizes Sam.

60A on 2/0 sounds like overkill for sure. I guess they wanted to keep voltage drop to an absolute minimum. We only use 25 sq. mm cable here -- equiv. to about #3 AWG -- for our standard 100A service feeders.

I believe way back there existed a 20A/125V receptacle that had one slot at 90 deg to the other. It would accept only a 20A plug. May well be that they standardized on it for all 20 amp circuits.

Now all 20A/125V receptacles have combination slots and will accept both 15A and 20A plugs. Reason being there is no reason you shouldn't be able to connect a device that draws less than 15 amps to a 20 amp circuit. Matter of fact it is perfectly acceptable to equip a 20 amp circuit with only standard 15A receptacles.

-Hal

A lot of the telco trucks use a 1-20 receptacle for 12vdc power on the trucks.