All the cudgels in Christendom, Kent or New England will never make me quiet - Randolph
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Folding plug wins Brit Insurance Design Awards
INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER Min-Kyu Choi has triumphed at the recent Brit Insurance Design Awards with his impressive reimagining of the ordinary mains plug.
Choi was commended for the plug's elegant design, according to information from the Awards.
The plug, which folds flat for transit and is a favourite of ours, has already nabbed him the runner-up prize in the 2009 James Dyson Awards and won the hearts and minds of plug fans everywhere.
Choi first thought of the idea for the plug when he bought a Macbook and was frustrated by the bulkiness of the plug, which seemed to be at odds with the design of the Apple laptop.
Rather than just sit around moaning about it though, Choi developed his innovative plug design, which uses a hinging mechanism to fold flat when not in use. Pretty it is, and it should save the scratches and bulges associated with keeping your average power supply in your rucksack.
In his introductory pages Choi says, "When people carry laptops with U.K plugs in a bag, it always causes problems such as tearing paper, scratching laptop surfaces and, sometimes, it breaks other stuff.".
Too true. We look forward to the plug winning safety approval and selling quite well. µ
Tags: Boffin watch
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I am an electrical engineer. It is often not realized that one of the reasons the BS 1363 plug and socket were introduced in 1947 was to reduce the number of child deaths caused by playing with sockets. In this it succeeded brilliantly, which is why it is now recognized as the safest system in the world.
Mr Choi's plug seems to ignore at least two of the essential safety features required by BS 1363, according to his company video on YouTube the fuse access is from the side of the plug opposite the pins, thus it fails to meet the requirement that "It shall be impossible to replace the fuse link in a plug unless the plug is completely withdrawn from the socket-outlet." From the demonstration in the BBC interview it is quite clear that there is no interlock between rotating the pins into the using position, and folding out the two sides, thus there is nothing to stop the plug being inserted with sides still folded. To ensure safety BS 1363 requires that there be at least 9.5mm from any part of the pins to the periphery of the plug, the minimum width of the plug is therefore the thickness of the pin (4mm) plus 2x 9.5mm, that is 2.3 cm in total, clearly as the folding plug is claimed to be only 1 cm it cannot possibly meet the standard.
The Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 make it illegal to supply plugs which do not meet BS 1363.
The UK system of regulation will ensure that Mr Choi's plug will not be sold here, but this raises an obvious question of why it is considered appropriate to honour the design of an illegal object? Did no one think of checking?
That's a neat design, but I was hoping it would actually fold the two wings and the grip over the plugs, for an encapsulated and more compact design. There may have been reasons this didn't work however.
Maybe this product will actually get somewhere. Granted, I doubt this plug will work well with high current draws, but as it was originally intended for laptops it should be fine.
Here's the original youtube vid on it, should you want a better view of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6DvjKkGT6s