undersized banana jacks

[eluminator]

I tried to plug some good quality banana plugs into my highly prized HY3003 bench power supply and found they wouldn't go into the holes in the banana jacks. Only the flimsiest banana plugs would work. The ones where the entire plug tip is made of a single piece of sheet metal.

I drilled out the holes by hand with a 5/32 inch bit in a pin vise, and now all my banana plugs fit okay.

Has anyone else ever encountered this?

 

[MrAl]

Hello there,

I've had even worse. I went to the local Electronic
store and bought several banana plugs because i was
building a measurement device for somebody that had
to plug into a digital meter.
After i got it together, i noticed that the plugs were very
short so that the end didnt stick out far enough to make
contact in many digital meter banana jacks. It did
fit in the very small meters but not in the larger
ones.
I was pissed because it was for someone else and i
had to explain that the device would only work with small
meters unless the banana plugs were changed.

I guess i have to remember this for next time...
there's two different lengths!

Take care,
Al

 

[eluminator]

Yeah, digital meters these days have special jacks that take those banana plugs on the test leads that have a shield around the plug. I guess they do that because people use their meters to test high voltage and when they get killed, the meter manufacturers get sued. I shouldn't forget that OSHA or some other horrible government agency might be to blame for that problems.

But the jacks on my power supply are just plain simple jacks like the ones I've been using for 50 years. The first time I tried to insert a decent banana plug I thought I was losing my mind. It was hard to believe the hole was too small, but it was.