Yes, the "typical" power strip clearly is not up to the job. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if you can buy a 20A strip that is up to the job. It appears that you can, like this one that mentions power tools as an application: http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/mo ... delID=3462. The downside is the price, roughly $60 from Amazon, and twice that through industrial electronics distributors. I'll probably keep using my cheap one for hand tools and such, and plug the SS directly into a 20A outlet.JPG40504 wrote:I would not attempt to connect an induction motor to a typical 'power strip' since the common practice of using printed circuitry when line surge protection(and worse all connectons to sockets) is present does indeed act as a fuse. The SS motor surge is above 25A and even higher if starting under load. The printed circuit foil can take overload current but only for a very short duration. Also the use of solder makes for a problem if overheating occurs.
As for the switch making, the start up current is delayed due to the inductive load presented by the motor coils. That same inductance causes potential arcing when the switch is opened. That arcing is what wears switches out. IIUC the hp rating of a switch is directly related to contact size. Switches can arc when making, but that is caused by contact 'bounce'(brief period of make/break/make/break/. . .sequence) and would occur while the current to a motor is still ramping up.
The typical 'power strip' came about with the advent of personal computers and serves that function reasonably well. There are great differences in their construction. The less 'robust' designs will perform poorly under with higher current 'appliances'.
You undoubtedly know this already, but for the non-EE's edification, printed circuit boards can be designed to carry heavy currents. I personally designed a 600V, 80A servomotor drive that we use for machine-tool spindle drives. It is 100% printed circuitry, but uses heavy (i.e. thick) copper and wide traces (or even entire regions of a circuit-board plane) for the high-current stuff. Full rated current will cause a copper temperature rise of no more than 10C. But a $10 garden-variety power strip is unlikely use more copper than is necessary for the typical PC and lighting applications.
BTW, I hadn't thought about the motor inductance protecting the switch contacts while making, but that makes perfect sense.