Joining a damaged 200W appliance flex - any gotchas?

[David]

Managed to melt some of the flex on a slow cooker. [Posted about previously.]

Looking inside, the wiring looks complicated with all the heat shielding, cable joins etc. I an considering that cutting out the damaged piece and joining the two good bits together might be more straightforward.

Cooker is rated at 200W. Cable is roughly 6.8 mm in diameter.

I can find a wide variety of different cable joints.

which looks simple but has a long delivery date.

which has the added benefit of being waterproof. Looking the better option at the moment. However Shiny-Go isn't a brand that I recognise.

Any recommendations or warnings?

Cheers

Dave R

[Roger Mills]

I would use crimps on the individual conductors, and then cover the whole join with shrinkwrap. See

[GB]

I suppose a slow cooker might just be 200w. I must admit that my first thought was that you had missed a 0 off the end, but a very, very slow cooker might be 200w.

That's less than an amp, so you could pretty much join it just by twisting the wire ends together and covering the join in sellotape.

That should be fine.

One of these is cheaper and will do just as well:

I wouldn't get that. Waterproof is OTT. The very, very worst that happens is that you spill water on the connector, it shorts, and the RCD operates.

[newshound]

As others have said, 200W sounds too low and 2kW too high. The appliance should have a plate on it.

Melted flex is not necessarily fatal, unless the wires are shorted and blowing fuses or tripping circuit breakers. It may be exposing live wires or bringing them close to the surface in which case an easy fix would be to bind it with several layers of PVC tape.

If it's knackered, I'd use heat shrink over solder or crimp, but if your experience stops at rewiring a plug one of these would do:

Or for a non-unplugging one from radiospares, apparently cheaper but they will charge postage

Those are three-wire ones, your appliance may be double insulated and only have two wires. In that case, here is a "fixed" one

[nothanks]

I think (hope!) you mean heat shrink. Soldering is probably better if the OP doesn't have access to a proper crimp tool. Heat shrink over each joint and then heat shrink or self-amalgamating tape over the whole lot. To the OP: do you need the full cable length? Would the bit that's attached to the plug be long enough if you just terminated it inside the cooker?

[Mike Humphrey]

No, sounds about right for a slow cooker. Just checked mine and it's marked as 152W-180W. They're pretty low-powered, that's why you need at least four hours to cook anything even on "high". And as that's less than 1A, if you're not bothered about appearance anything mains-rated will do.

Mike

[alan_m]

The manual for the first 3 litre slow cooker I found on google said

152 to 183 Watts - it had 3 heat settings.

[Animal]

You can get em with as little as 55w consumption.

[JNugent]

Something like this, which can easily and safely be wired up and needs no bodging with chocolate block or insulation tape?

[williamwright]

Personally I would always use solder and heatshrink, then cover with self-amalgamating tape.

Bill

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

I think the one I'd say is that if you can find one that is waterproof that is the one you use, since any spillage will, according to the law of Mr Sod, get in and cause a safety issue. To be honest many moons ago when I could see the best joint I made in this sort of cable was soldered and heatshrinked sleeved over each connector then a larger heatshrink over the whole thing. It eventually will fail of course but care needs to be taken to make all joints smooth inside. You might even consider some kind of splint over it, but that might be overkill. It is indeed a shame that modern appliances do not have detachable cables as things like Irons and cookers do get damaged cables quite a lot. Brian

[David]

Interesting choice.

Thanks

Dave R

[David]

I am sacrificing some length in the join.

However the melted bit is quite close to the cooker and a stub lead would be restrictive.

Thanks for the tought.

Dave R

[David]

<snip>

I read the rating off the sticker on the device. [I measured the cable diameter with a digital calliper.]

The damage was noticed when the RCBO popped. So the cable is certainly damaged.

I am probably too nervous about soldering and then wrapping in heat shrink and taping up. Somehow a plastic connector with screws seems more robust, but I am heeding the general advice.

Cheers

Dave R

[fred]

istr home made slow cookers using high wattage light bulbs

[misterroy]

Would removing a flex from another (broken) appliance and using it to replace the damaged one be a more elegant solution?

[charles]

Last week, I was asked to PAT test 2 slow cookers. They both had IEC (kettle) connectors.

[David]

Already been discussed in an earlier thread.

In my OP I said that the internals of the slow cooker looked a bit complicated so I was looking for an easier route.

Cheers

Dave R

[Roger Mills]

Sorry - yes - put it down to brain fart!

[David]

update with thanks as usual.

Decided against whole cable replacement because the connections inside the cooker looked overly complex to be the easiest route.

Sourced a cable joint.

First stage of the repair today was to expose the obviously damaged bit and investigate. Temporary (FSVOT) repair with electrical insulating tape to check there was only one problem area, and now under test. All good so far.

It looks as though, as suggested, the fact that the sheathing had melted (or at least gone soft and been deformed) didn't mean the underlying wires were necessarily damaged and unserviceable.

If all goes well I will replace the insulating tape with a cable joint for a more "professional" repair when my Tuit is sufficiently round.

Cheers

Dave R