Are Wago lever nuts approved for industrial use?

[ramsy]

Found out lever locks are not listed for North American aluminum branch wiring, glad I never tried that.

However, they are listed for some punishing environments, including explosive areas, and European aluminum branch wiring.

Also remember the temperature rise shown with The lever lock listing was extraordinary.

Since, my use was rare, and service work is not a production environment, my lack of callbacks is by no means a substantial test.

 

[ramsy]

i've been at it for 4 decades, there is no way on God's green earth anyone is going to have me subscribe to these lame a** 'wago's'.....thx ~RJ~

Unlike laboratory tests, used for impressive listing specs, a substantial production test for lever locks should include common installation practices.

1) Such as, cramming devices into boxes by applying force, or body weight, etc..

Wirenuts remain in tact under such force, however, Lever locks may not, especially when force is applied to solid #12 Awg.

 

[romex jockey]

Last 20yrs, Lever-locks were a necessity for wires in back of box, too short for wirenuts.

Rarely needed, but never got a callback, never seen them fail at convenience outlet, but also never checked the listing, until last year.

found out lever locks are not listed for North American aluminum branch wiring, Apparently different from European aluminum branch wiring.

I cut 'em off, and throw the away , they are merely another crappy product that our shill nrtl's advocated to me

i've also seen them fail, to the tune of $$$$

bad connections are the better part of my service calls

i'd encourage you (et all) to read the AEH , for what constitutes quality workmanship

~RJ~

 

[petersonra]

we have had really good luck with them. easy to use and they seem quite resistant to failure caused by vibration, especially in comparison to typical vibrating wire nuts that seem to fall off on a regular basis unless they are taped.

 

[ramsy]

i've also seen them fail, to the tune of $$$$

..i'd encourage you (et all) to read the AEH , for what constitutes quality workmanship

Can you provide a link to the AEH document you're referring?

Curious how Lever Locks hold up buried in drywall mud, the typical alkaline environment inside new-construction boxes, full of drywall rocks.

 

[Coppersmith]

we have had really good luck with them. easy to use and they seem quite resistant to failure caused by vibration, especially in comparison to typical vibrating wire nuts that seem to fall off on a regular basis unless they are taped.

Taped wirenuts--The true mark of a professional

 

[romex jockey]

Can you provide a link to the AEH document you're referring?

sure>>>>

https://imgur.com/ynhGhnr

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www.barnesandnoble.com

~RJ~

 

[ramsy]

Lets see those "Taped Wirenuts" in the AEH !

 

[mikeames]

Did someone post this awhile back about testing the lever lock and spring type?

 

[paulengr]

Other than energy efficiency, I think they were better in many ways, especially if using in a dimming application.

Uhh for cooking things in an Easy Bake oven??

Actually dimming incandescent a sucks. They aren’t very linear in terms of dimming and the filaments rattle at low levels. LEDs in particular are very easy to dim (pulse width modulation) and very linear light output but sending a dimming signal can be tricky to actually do. “Dimmable” LEDs try to read the SCR chopped dimmer waveform and then try to copy what a nonlinear incandescent would do. So lots of reasons this goes wrong but very different from LEDs with 0-10 V that are very smooth and reliable.

 

[LarryFine]

Did someone post this awhile back about testing the lever lock and spring type?

I'm honestly impressed by both of them.

 

[LarryFine]

Uhh for cooking things in an Easy Bake oven??

My little sister had one of the original ones, that used two 60w bulbs. She didn't use it, so I did.

 

[mikeames]

Actually dimming incandescent a sucks. They aren’t very linear in terms of dimming and the filaments rattle at low levels.

That's a preference. I think linear sucks for dimming and some manufactures like Ketra are trying to replicate the non linear dimming aspect of incandescent with non-linear color-temp. Linear is important for some things but not necessarily for human centric lighting. LEDS may be mathematically linear with the light output and control but dimming an LED down low is a "what da heck" experience unless it's something like a Ketra product that adjusts for it. LEDs are precisely wrong for dimming while Incandescents are stupidly pleasant.

 

[gadfly56]

That's a preference. I think linear sucks for dimming and some manufactures like Ketra are trying to replicate the non linear dimming aspect of incandescent with non-linear color-temp. Linear is important for some things but not necessarily for human centric lighting. LEDS may be mathematically linear with the light output and control but dimming an LED down low is a "what da heck" experience unless it's something like a Ketra product that adjusts for it. LEDs are precisely wrong for dimming while Incandescents are stupidly pleasant.

The human eye has a non-linear response to light levels, so linear dimming doesn't jibe with our intuitive sense of changes in light level vs what's on the slider.

 

[wwhitney]

Apparently, human perception of brightness is not linear in lumens, it follows a square root law:

http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/Measured_vs_Perceived.pdf

So my first take would be that a linear dimmer slider should be linear in perceived brightness, not in lumens.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[mikeames]

The human eye has a non-linear response to light levels, so linear dimming doesn't jibe with our intuitive sense of changes in light level vs what's on the slider.

Exactly. Nice source. So to get dimming to feel linear at the control, you actually need a non linear output which is one of a few reasons LED dimming always feels weird. In addition to a constant color temp, etc....

 

[kwired]

Uhh for cooking things in an Easy Bake oven??

Actually dimming incandescent a sucks. They aren’t very linear in terms of dimming and the filaments rattle at low levels. LEDs in particular are very easy to dim (pulse width modulation) and very linear light output but sending a dimming signal can be tricky to actually do. “Dimmable” LEDs try to read the SCR chopped dimmer waveform and then try to copy what a nonlinear incandescent would do. So lots of reasons this goes wrong but very different from LEDs with 0-10 V that are very smooth and reliable.

I don't have much bad to say about 0-10 V LED dimming systems. LED's that supposedly work with conventional dimmer in the supply line however don't always work so well, they also seem to have more troubles on the low end of the dimming range than incandescent lamps did.

 

[paulengr]

I don't have much bad to say about 0-10 V LED dimming systems. LED's that supposedly work with conventional dimmer in the supply line however don't always work so well, they also seem to have more troubles on the low end of the dimming range than incandescent lamps did.

Good reason for that. Abs by the way the 0-10 V systems are often selectable between linear and square law curves. Nonlinear potentiometers are more rare but definitely exist, even if there are no fancy digital electronics involved.

Incandescent has huge problems at the low end. The filaments rattle like crazy. A standard residential dimmer uses a TRIAC (two SCRs back to back), a zero crossing detector, and a timer. When the zero crossing detector fires it delays until the timer goes off (based on the knob) then pulses the TRIAC on. When the current crosses zero the TRIAC goes off and the cycle repeats, 120 times per second. Effectively this throttles the power in a square law shape (V-squared / R) so it gives the desired nonlinear dimming with incandescent.

A white (actually blue with phosphor coating) power LED is actually DC. It takes roughly 6-12 VDC to fire but it tends to go into thermal runaway...it will overheat itself if you don’t control the current. So LED drivers are constant current instead of constant voltage. Also unlike all other light sources it can turn on and off essentially instantly. So to avoid flicker the driver will pulse it on and off around 120 Hz or more and control the percentage of time that it is on. Aside from this the power supply will be a charge pump aka “switching” type so up to a certain point it can operate at any voltage as long as it’s a little above 12 V. Needless to say this is why LED dimming is very controllable and very easy to do, much easier than incandescent.

As far as the control signal though it just has to run a timer to measure how long the TRIAC dimmer is on or use a signal like 0-10 VDC. With the TRIAC approach timing is the easy part. At the low end on a “dimmable” LED running off a TRIAC the AC is only pulsed on for a very short time and the driver has to try to keep the DC charge pump stable over a full cycle so the brightness doesn’t fall off in a weird nonlinear way due to current dipping even as it pulse width modulates it for brightness control. On top of that marketing wants to sell millions as cheaply as possible so you can’t just use a huge capacitor to stabilize things. So just as with incandescent low end dimming might not be all that nice.

So it should be obvious dimmable LEDs do work so-so but don’t expect much. 0-10 V is best today. Ideally we can just send a digital signal to the fixture/bulb but currently there is nothing universal or consistent about “smart” lights. It may work today bug break and be discontinued 3 months from now.

 

[mikeames]

So it should be obvious dimmable LEDs do work so-so but don’t expect much. 0-10 V is best today. Ideally we can just send a digital signal to the fixture/bulb but currently there is nothing universal or consistent about “smart” lights. It may work today bug break and be discontinued 3 months from now.

Agreed.

Hopefully manufactures and the NEC can establish some standards so we don't have all these questions about class 2 mixed with power, and dividers, etc... Not to mention the actual connectors, plates, and fittings to make certain things work. For example UL listed High bay UFO type LED fixtures that have a cord and plug and 0-10v dim option just have the dim wires sticking out of the fixture. How do you professionally interface that with the receptacle that is fed using PCS " Duo cable ? There are no connectors or products YET that make this clean and easy. You have to get creative, or add unnecessary extra infrastructure just for the 0-10v portion.

 

[kwired]

Agreed.

Hopefully manufactures and the NEC can establish some standards so we don't have all these questions about class 2 mixed with power, and dividers, etc... Not to mention the actual connectors, plates, and fittings to make certain things work. For example UL listed High bay UFO type LED fixtures that have a cord and plug and 0-10v dim option just have the dim wires sticking out of the fixture. How do you professionally interface that with the receptacle that is fed using PCS " Duo cable ? There are no connectors or products YET that make this clean and easy. You have to get creative, or add unnecessary extra infrastructure just for the 0-10v portion.

just because it operates at 0-10 volts doesn't mean it has to be considered to be class 2. But once you start making it class 1 you need to treat it as class 1 throughout the entire circuit, can't just decide it is more convenient to run class 2 cable for a certain portion of the circuit, need to be class 1 methods entirely.