Fri Pic, Bad MC

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chris kennedy

chris kennedy

Senior Member
Location
Miami Fla.
Occupation
60 yr old tool twisting electrician
I had a gentleman landing MC's in a lighting controll J-box today when he found this.

Badmc005.jpg


This cable was manufactured by AFC Cable Systems.

Here is the scary part. We ran 1250' of this stuff in two days. I know this could happen to any manufacturer, but I have never heard of AFC. If the plastic covering between the conductors and the metal clad is intact, how long before a problem is seen?

On the lighter side of the news, got a kick out of this on the way home. How handy is Dan if he can't even make and hang a sign?

handymanonpost002.jpg
 
walkerj

walkerj

Senior Member
Location
Baton Rouge
I've seen AFC advertising in ECM, but have never used their product.

Shouldn't they have QC at the factory to not let this happen?
 
iwire

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
AFC is good stuff, its pretty much the only MC we get (they are local) and I have had only one issue with it. We had run a few thousand feet on a job and I was cutting it into some ceiling boxes. I found about 30' of the green conductor missing.

They also have any kind of MC you need in any colors you want.

Check it out
 
masterinbama

masterinbama

Senior Member
Location
Huntsville Alabama
That stuff goes by so fast at the factory all the QC guy had to do was blink as that was going by. I have had 1000' reels of 500 MCM look like that in the middle of a reel, makes for a bad day on a long pull. I tried to find the picture of the Square D 20/30 amp 2 pole but unfortunately I think it was on the flash drive that disappeared with my briefcase the other day. I picked up a 30 amp 2 pole homeline for a job one morning for a TPAC job we pulled the wire fished the panel and the wall in record time, everything was going smooth. Told my help we would get done about 3 hours faster than I expected. I went to put the receptacle in and the help was going to make up the panel and clean up. He came to me and said "hey boss man what size breaker should this be?" I said a 30 amp, he flipped it around and said "well this one is confused". Sure enough 1 handle said 20 and the other said 30. I will never again brag about how smooth things are going until I am loaded up and leaving with payment in hand.
 
electricalperson

electricalperson

Senior Member
Location
massachusetts
hey chris, i got bad MC from afc cable before. coil of 12/4 MC had messed up conductors. i stripped it to shove in a panel and the black one was all twisted and the insulation was damaged. we turned the circuit on and it tripped the breaker. i dont know why they dont test the cable before shipping it out
 
C

Cow

Senior Member
Location
Eastern Oregon
Occupation
Electrician
That looks like the tag on the MC we buy over here too, so I assume it's the same brand. One of our guys found a factory buttsplice in the green wire when stripping the sheath off.
 
Cavie

Cavie

Senior Member
Location
SW Florida
chris kennedy said:
I had a gentleman landing MC's in a lighting controll J-box today when he found this.

Badmc005.jpg


This cable was manufactured by AFC Cable Systems.

Here is the scary part. We ran 1250' of this stuff in two days. I know this could happen to any manufacturer, but I have never heard of AFC. If the plastic covering between the conductors and the metal clad is intact, how long before a problem is seen?

On the lighter side of the news, got a kick out of this on the way home. How handy is Dan if he can't even make and hang a sign?

handymanonpost002.jpg
Click to expand...

Handy Dan's pretty smart. If he puts a sign up it's in violatation of city code an the code cops take it down. This way it takes the city maintenance crew to remove it and that will probibly never happen.
 
peter d

peter d

Senior Member
Location
New England
AFC is headquartered in New Bedford, MA, but they have factories all over the country. They are nowhere near as big as Southwire but they are still a major MC cable manufacturer. As the others have said they make a quality product and like any manufacturer they do make mistakes sometimes.

Kaf Tech is the company in Florida that AFC purchased, so I'm surprised you've never heard of them before, Chris.
 
quogueelectric

quogueelectric

Senior Member
Location
new york
peter d said:
AFC is headquartered in New Bedford, MA, but they have factories all over the country. They are nowhere near as big as Southwire but they are still a major MC cable manufacturer. As the others have said they make a quality product and like any manufacturer they do make mistakes sometimes.

Kaf Tech is the company in Florida that AFC purchased, so I'm surprised you've never heard of them before, Chris.
Click to expand...
I have installed miles and miles of AFC cable and occasionally I will run across a splice in the wire or something along these lines. It is all part of the game. with the plastic wrap it will probably not even be noticed ever.
 
TOOL_5150

TOOL_5150

Senior Member
Location
bay area, ca
we have AFC and southwire redily avalible here. I choose southwire over AFC any day, It is much cleaner than afc, but afc has a better bending radius.

~Matt
 
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