ssylee

Hi All:
I have two loose end power cables that I need to connect together. One cable has a color code of brown, blue, green/yellow, while the other cable is black, white, and green. I checked online , and found that I should match up brown with black for voltage input, blue with white for Neutral , and green with green/yellow for protective ground. The link I used is http://www.interfacebus.com/Wire_Ins...olor_Code.html and http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_5/chpt_2/2.html . However, after I soldered the wires together, and tried to plug it in. I saw sparks. Can someone tell me if I did anything wrong?

Sceadwian

Sounds about right, but without pictures of the power cables themselves you're really not giving us much to go on. Sparks might be okay if the device had power when you plugged it in, a little contact arcing is normal if it immediatly draws current. Does the device work? Relying strictly on the color of the wires is usually a bad idea, standards aside there's really no way of being sure which wire is the correct one. You should be able to tell what wire goes to hot/neutral/ground by checking with a meter on both ends of the plugs/wires. You really shouldn't bother patching together a power cord like this, they're low to no cost (I have a whole box full of various power cables) Just use a new one.

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Leftyretro

We would really need to know what the cable connect to and of course their manufacture should have wiring diagram defining the pin out of their connectors. Relying on just industrial recommended color coding in not the safest way to have proceeded. AC wiring is pretty standardized with white, black, green (at least here in the US) but all bets are off for DC wire color coding, I've seen many different colors used. Is this power cabling DC or AC?

Lefty

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Measurement changes behavior

ssylee

Sorry for being vague. I'm trying to reconnect the power cable that got cut off, and I have trouble finding documentations on where things are connected on the device. The device didn't work. I am going to use a new one, although I'm not sure how that's going to help since I still have trouble figuring out what goes to where on the device.

While I'm at it, I would contact the manufacturer for the wiring diagram. This is for power cabling AC.

Boncuk

Hi ssylee,

the cable brown, blued and yellow (normally yellow and green) is a European standard cable.

Brown goes to life, blue to neutral and yellow/green to PE.

The other colours I don't know about. If the device works properly with and you don't get an electric shock it should be OK.

Boncuk