The term “short” has become a meaningless phrase in common culture to mean “anything wrong with an electrical device.” A short circuit is a particular fault that can mean one of two things in technical lingo: 1. Any two circuits that are connecting in an undesigned manner This issue would be the case if a […]

“Service factor” is an interesting motor rating that you will see on many motor data tags. It simply means how much additional “work” a motor can do or how much “load” it may be placed under for short periods of time without failure or overload. For example, the FLA or full load amps of the […]

Did you know that electrical terminals have a torque value? Yeah, I didn’t either for a long time. “Tight” worked well enough, but I’ve seen a few connections overheat after a while, and now I wonder… Did you know that tightening electrical screw terminals to their torque specs is part of the NFPA 70/National Electrical […]