Never seen this on flex

[7029 dave]

My mum said take a look Dave, think a wire has come out of the hair dryer, so went round and found this , got it home and its a strand on the neutral poked straight through the flex, has anyone ever seen this because I have not.

Unfortunately cant reflex, the plastic handle has also broke so its going in the bin.

 

[snowhead]

Them Damn Alliens assisted by the Gremlins again..

It would be interesting to see if that's a manufacturing fault and the neutral was damaged when the outer was formed around it.

 

[DPG]

I've only ever seen that once. One strand was just poking through the outer sheath of a mains lead (IEC type I think). Pretty much flush with the sheath.

I suppose every now and again the manufacturing process goes a bit awry. And quality control isn't always up to much these days.

 

[7029 dave]

I've only ever seen that once. One strand was just poking through the outer sheath of a mains lead (IEC type I think). Pretty much flush with the sheath.

I suppose every now and again the manufacturing process goes a bit awry. And quality control isn't always up to much these days.

Its quite old, she has had it a long time, but said only noticed it recently, although 93 years old she is sharp and would of spotted that from day one. weird.

 

[DPG]

Its quite old, she has had it a long time, but said only noticed it recently, although 93 years old she is sharp and would of spotted that from day one. weird.

Yes it's a strange one.

 

[James]

The only way I can imagine that happening, short of a manufacturing fault is.

Constant flexing of the cable has led to strands breaking inside the inner insulation.
This could allow a strand to push through over time if it is scraping against the same part of insulation over and over.
When it gets through, the flexing may lead to it slowly creeping out

 

[UNG]

I've seen something similar 2 or 3 times but it was many years ago, I was told it was something that could occur in the manufacturing process while trying to keep a continuous run of copper going into the coating machine they twist the new onto end of the one in the machine, the theory goes that the point is marked or the length noted so it can be chopped out when it is cut to length and wound onto drums, in this case it was probably coated with blue insulation and was automatically merged into a 3 core cable and got it's next coating without being noticed
Seen it in T&E where you get a hard spot in the cable due to the cores being welded to keep a continuous strand of copper though the coating process it should be taken out but very occasionally it gets out of the factory un checked