Chlad":26frtp1m said:
I thought tools generally came in 110v and 240v versions and only noticed the 230v recently. I noticed there is a difference in price between the 230v and 240v though. However found a thread in an electricians forum and it seems that the 230v has been brought in to bring us in line with Europe.
It's a "conceit". In other words nothing has really changed except the labels. They are (or should be) still 240V tools, just labeled as 230V.
It comes down to EU "harmonization," to introduce a "standard" voltage across Europe,
irrespective of whether or not it is technically sensible.
The Eurocrats decreed, and the technical standards bodies caved in and "just did it". Er, or not.
In practice it's possible to changeover but has expensive ramifications for the UK on 240V, for example damaging some sorts of equipment (such as refrigerator pumps), and affecting power delivery, and so on. Going the other way, 220V to 230V could actually cause stuff to fail too (to burn out).
Technically, the one thing that is truly annoying in all this is that the range of variation in UK mains has been changed, so that a
strictly theoretical (must emphasize that) 230V is legal.
It used to be that the power delivery companies were allowed to be +/- 5V centred on 240V. Now, IIRC, it's +5V and -10V (but still "centred" on 240V).
So if your property is fed with low volts in the 230-235V range, you can no longer get it adjusted as you could in the past. If you do ring up and complain, whereas they would have sent a man out to change the tapping on the supply transformer (in the sub station), now they will simply tell you to "go away". Or something. We have had iffy mains in the past - I was told exactly that, but in the past they would have been legally required to put it right.
But it was before, and still is the case, that in any European country using 220V, our 240V tools should still work, but at slightly lower power, and possibly slightly lower efficiency (depending on what they are used for). There's pretty much nothing in the woodworking arsenal that would give up when asked to work at a lower voltage.
. . .
There is a separate issue with the differences across the Pond, because the two continents have different mains
frequencies.
Here (UK and the Continent) we are 50Hz, in the Americas and other places where the Yanks have had a strong influence, it's 60Hz. Normally for human-sized tools this makes little difference - the voltage is the issue - but things like power transformers (in substations) are designed for either 50Hz or 60Hz, and won't work efficiently on both. It can sometimes also affect things like big electric motors and the ballasts used in fluorescent lighting (they're not always universal).
People often import tools from the USA, routers and tablesaws being good examples, and either run them on 240:110V transformers, or switch links internally so they work here. Those motors
might be slightly slower (60Hz-to-50Hz difference), but otherwise probably work just fine.
Hope that clarifies it a bit.
E.
PS: I find the following very sad, but it shows that the standards-manipulation game has been played for a very long time:
Q: Why do the Americans use 110V?
A: because that requires thicker wires to work efficiently. When their mains was being standardized back at the turn of the last century, extremely wealthy copper mine owners realised 240V in the house would dramatically affect their sales (it can efficiently use thinner wires),
and successfully lobbied Congress to restrict the standard to 110V.
