ElectricSmarts Network

The days of locating onsite generation or an electrical outlet in order to cut cable appear to be waning.

Similarly, contractors and electricians who need to cut cable can now do so with far less strain on their arms or backs, thanks to new lines of battery-operated hand held cable cutters such as those now being offered by BURNDY.

If you work with electrical processes or electronics, fuses are obviously a part of your life. While circuit breakers are used for many applications, the good old fusible link in its various forms and iterations is still a necessary part of many circuits.

Fuses come in different shapes, sizes, and functions. When choosing a fuse for a circuit, choose carefully. The characteristics vary widely, and you need to use the one for the application you're designing.

ILSCO’s TaskMaster continues to add to its popular battery-powered crimpers and cut-ters hand tools line.

The company recently debuted its TB-CUT26ACSR-IS, an ACRS cutter featuring a 350° rotatable scissor head design with heavy duty blades that cuts up to 3/8” EHS Guy Wire and 556 ACSR.  Blade inserts make for easy field replacement.  A DataTrack / USB interface captures output performance and data. The tool is backed by a 5-year TaskMaster Pro warranty.

Sensor-based lighting control is becoming a must in many commercial and institutional settings. The drivers for this trend include ever-tightening energy standards and increasing scrutiny of energy bills by building owners and managers. How successful those sensors are in actually cutting lighting costs, however, depends on lighting designers and electrical contractors who understand the basics of how sensors work, and which models are best for each application.

Most of us who work in commercial or institutional spaces rarely think about lighting, and that’s a problem for any facility’s energy bills. Occupancy/vacancy sensors can help by becoming a lighting system’s brains – these devices think about lighting, so we don’t have to. Selecting the right kind of sensor for each location is important, though, because not every sensor “sees” in the same way.

There are several types of conduit. Of course, you know that. But in this article, we're only going to discuss metallic conduits. PVC conduit may be a topic for another day. Because of their somewhat fragile composition — particularly in commercial and industrial settings — they don't fit in with this article.

Of course, the main two families of conduit, if conduits had families, are steel and aluminum.