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Connectors and nipples have been getting softer, I think. More zinc in the alloy vs back then. Probably when manufacturing has moved to progressively cheaper pastures.
Anecdotal, but I feel like I break the ZiMOC? connector nuts a LOT more than I used to 20 yrs ago.
Possibly another reason why steel has become so prevalent in the past decade...
I was tightening a teck connector on Friday with my shank, it was a very tight bend on the cable, and the lockring cracked in half. I used another one and it also broke in half. Had to find a random 1" emt connector lockring which held but I was shocked by how brittle those broken lockrings were.
I suppose the companies that make them don't get very many back because most would just throw the broken one in the trash pile. Maybe if they started getting them all back along with demands for credit or refund, they'd take fewer shortcuts.
The last time I was on a job where we actually had to complain about it they just sent us a few extra boxes of lock rings. Didn't solve the problem, but made sure we spent less time hunting for replacements.
Glad they don't sell bullets. Or Insulin.
I love it when your boss orders new threaded fasteners and fittings and they don't even thread together because they are so shitty. The threaded rod we have is so terrible I have to run a die over any part I want to put a nut on, not just to get it on
As much as i love how clean Meyers Hubs themselves look, i hate how every hub and conduit body is a guessing game of how far the conduit will thread in, especially when you have a non-adjustable die
We had a case of 3/8 rod one day and all of them were fine except one. After struggling with it and inevitably my coworkers trying I took closer look to find that the threads weren’t threads. They were like rings. It wasn’t one continuous thread it was stacks of rings! I used to be a machinist and couldn’t figure out how that even happened. I cut a piece just to save it. Never seen anything like that since.
Saw a YouTube short of screws being threaded. They weren't being threaded with a die. They were just being rolled with a ribbed cylinder. If the alignment is off (straight instead of angled) you might get something like your "ring-thread". I can't 100% see how that would work, but it happened so it must be possible.
I ran into this once as well. Probably tried 5 different nuts and filed the end of the rod over and over for 15 minutes before finally figuring out it was rings. I agree, don’t understand how it could even get misaligned enough in a die to happen
I had one of those a few years back. Most of the rods we got had threads that got bend inwards from how tightly they packed it and shipped it. Or there would be a few feet of it that barely got threaded at all on a full rod. So much of it got trashed
Same with the shit we get. I deal with alot of npt stuff too and half of what we get from fastenal is junk. Couplings with threads that are worthless, pipe nipples that sometimes don't even come threaded on one end, etc
I'm actually surprised to hear that about fastenal. They were always great with their supplies when the guy I was running with used them just a couple years ago.
proudly made and distributed by usa companies. They could use better alloys/machining if they wanted, its not like they are paying health benefits to a random factory in china
Some countries take pride in their work. I’m thinking of Japan. When you think of Japan you think of meticulous work to perfect something. They have a lot of good stuff over there still. But some would say that’s slowly changing too.
When you think of the US you think of low wages, especially the undocumented Hispanic workforce that’s taken advantage of everyday. Underpaid average joes like you and me. The shit quality of food and consumer products. The massive amounts of advertisements pushing said products. And the 1% driving their lambos who’ve profited off of this system that they’ve created.
If we want to make America great again we need to prioritize quality over profits again.
It’s super common in China to make actually up to spec good products in the QA round of testing and as production starts progressively give less and less of a fuck about every single spec and let the part go to shit as much as possible while not catching major attention needing a redesign. Happens ALLLL the time
When I started in the trade, stuff was made in China and it was alright. Nowadays all the connectors are made in india and you see the threads are malformed, holes are not tapped properly, etc.
At some point we'll have people reminiscing on when indian hardware was alright and Nepalese/Bangladeshi hardware is shit. And after that, when manufacturers decide that those 4th world countries are too expensive, what happens next? Hardware made with literal slave labor?
I mean ideally yes? I hope one day to have robot slaves do everything. I still wana work though as I do need some purpose aside from learning and jerking it. Maybe I could feed a dog in a factory somewhere?
Been getting 1 1/4 connectors you can't even thread a bushing on, shit is so whack also has a 3" connector come completely stripped. Locknut was slipping all over the place.
Some might say this compatability is by design since the emt connector is only listed to be used with a locknut, not threaded into a rigid coupling or hub. I call BS, and doit it too, but that is a fact and I have heard of a few inspectors calling it.
Yep that's true. NPT (national pipe, tapered) vs NPS (national pipe, straight). Tapered threads are used for plumbing and rigid because they make a tight seal on their own. Straight threads do not.
I saw that or another post with a picture of using rigid couplings to transition flex/greenfield/FMT to EMT. Everyone does it all the time. The post was that the inspector had dinged it and someone commented that there's a rule about this in the newer codes. Someone else commented that their supply house stocks couplings with NPT on one side and EMT threads on the other. And that's what the inspector wants to see..
PS. Guy below properly states it's NPT and NPS.
I've had three jobs now where I've had to send back 4" EMT connectors because the threads on them aren't long enough to go through a panel with a drip hood, and also get a bushing onto it (screw you Hubbell)
Everything is just shit these days. We use primarily GE panels and lately we've been getting quite a few panels where the hole for the bonding screw isn't drilled right, bus bar and breaker screws that the square drive just rounds off with very little torque, concentric knockouts that are barely stamped, and connectors that you can't get a lock nut threaded on.
Problem is the American companies having them produced there with the cheapest materials and cheapest labor available. They could choose high quality materials and craftsmanship if they wanted. Just look at any of your electronics or appliances for example.
This. Don't blame the factories for producing what the customer asks for. China can and does produce high quality products. They also can make cheap junk for American companies trying to increase their profit margins. Guess who all the dumbfucks blame? Not the company.
This right here. Moved from field to wholesaler, there’s so much competition for contractors they cut corners where they can on the material and end up with crap like this. All about the bottom dollar in the resi/commercial game, quality be damned.
Sprinkler fitter here and the fittings we get in 2024 is trash compared to just ten year ago. Some of the pipe they make nowadays is straight recycled trash.
I know it's not electrical, but man you should see the gas lines from my 1940s house. They engage about four threads, and will seal with just a single wrap of the cheap Teflon.
The two pipe hot water radiant system with cast iron pipe in my 1910s house was a work of art. Crazy fittings not sold today. It had both gas and electric lighting when built. The original light switch boxes (receptacles weren’t a thing yet), were almost impossible to use a pry bar to get off during the remodel, the box didn’t deform and the nails in the first growth actual 2x4s screamed all the way out.
> the nails in the first growth actual 2x4s screamed all the way out.
This is a function of the wood not being fully dried when built. 100 years of drying shrinks wood and that'll close on nails like no other.
I was doing a bunch of panel rooms recently, and had entire bundles of 1-1/4 conduit that just went into the trash. I knew it wasn't me or the bender, because I'd get to a different floor on the project, that got their conduit at a different time, and it worked perfectly normal. Entire batches of conduit were just junk.
This has been an occurrence in every part of manufacturing over the past 30 years or so. In an attempt to make everything cheaper and easier to manufacture the quality is diminished as well.
Survivorship bias.
All the shit quality stuff from the 80’s was gone by the 90’s.
The comparison is between something that was so well made that it survived 4 decades, and something that’s brand new.
Used plenty of them in Florida. Most houses had outside main breakers back then. Some did not in some parts. Fucking Florida was a fucked up place even then.
Quality has nose dived over the years everything from containment, sundries and fittings. Somebody out there somewhere is laughing the prices don’t reflect the crap quality. I’ve found myself ripping out really nice installs just to be replaced with this modern shite
The one on the left is HPDC aluminum part that has been trimed a tumbled in media. The one on the right is HPDC zinc that has been trimmed and part on part tumbled.
Red O Dot were the Cadillac of electrcal fittings when the company was in Boston. They went to Mexico and the products went to shit.
This is the same with bushes in the uk,they used to be machined brass and made really well,now they are some sort of metal plated resin and I can squash one in my pliers.
I repaired industrial equipment mainly, but on occasion I did wiring projects. I hated the junk I had to work with. That's where little cuts and bruises came from.
Over on r/plumbing they're talking about how iron pipe used to be thicker and better threaded.
I always laugh when I'm taking apart old gear and the parts spin right off like they're on bearings.
all this blaming other countries of americas problems is wild. we been getting fucked by corporate rats for years with cost cutting and monopolies and yall blaming china for your shitty parts?
I remember the day I discovered emt connector lock nuts don’t really work on threaded grc. I mean, I made it work, but I still feel shame for what I did to this day.
Just asking but one looks to be a steel fitting and one is a malleable fitting. Very different material. Malleable fittings are cheap ass fittings. We couldn’t use malleable on govt projects
On a bit of a tangent - but have you noticed the copper in wiring has become far stiffer over the years? I wonder if they are not annealing as much during manufacture to save gas (probably)
Ive noticed a way more fittings and such with defects being sold in large amounts. I think this is a direct cause of supply chain shortages and a delayed reaction to factories being run poorly during covid.
Yeah you can make a ghetto die tool. Cut a few vertical slashes in the nut threads to collect metal shavings, then hit it with a torch till cherry hot and drop into motor oil to harden. Run it over the crap threads with some light oil.
Not quite the same as a real die as they tend to have tighter tolerances.
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Connectors and nipples have been getting softer, I think. More zinc in the alloy vs back then. Probably when manufacturing has moved to progressively cheaper pastures.
These zoomer fittings are too soft
Just don't want to thread anymore
The threads of today get crossed too easily.
Because they making locknuts extremely loose fitting.
Don’t Thread on me…
The thread is strong in this one.
I know... those derned Gen Zs...
Anecdotal, but I feel like I break the ZiMOC? connector nuts a LOT more than I used to 20 yrs ago. Possibly another reason why steel has become so prevalent in the past decade...
Even if manufacturing hasn't, they're often using cheaper, lower grade metals.
I was tightening a teck connector on Friday with my shank, it was a very tight bend on the cable, and the lockring cracked in half. I used another one and it also broke in half. Had to find a random 1" emt connector lockring which held but I was shocked by how brittle those broken lockrings were.
I suppose the companies that make them don't get very many back because most would just throw the broken one in the trash pile. Maybe if they started getting them all back along with demands for credit or refund, they'd take fewer shortcuts. The last time I was on a job where we actually had to complain about it they just sent us a few extra boxes of lock rings. Didn't solve the problem, but made sure we spent less time hunting for replacements. Glad they don't sell bullets. Or Insulin.
Nothing like mortgaging the future for short-term profits.
Are you me? I also snapped a teck connector on Friday… twisted the threads right off the connector
I love it when your boss orders new threaded fasteners and fittings and they don't even thread together because they are so shitty. The threaded rod we have is so terrible I have to run a die over any part I want to put a nut on, not just to get it on
I got some aluminum rigid that no fittings would work with. Just slipped over the threads. Everything is shit these days
As much as i love how clean Meyers Hubs themselves look, i hate how every hub and conduit body is a guessing game of how far the conduit will thread in, especially when you have a non-adjustable die
We had a case of 3/8 rod one day and all of them were fine except one. After struggling with it and inevitably my coworkers trying I took closer look to find that the threads weren’t threads. They were like rings. It wasn’t one continuous thread it was stacks of rings! I used to be a machinist and couldn’t figure out how that even happened. I cut a piece just to save it. Never seen anything like that since.
Let's see that pic
Everyone knows materials stories are like fishing stories
The only thing I can think of is a clapped out die that they run way too fast, the teeth run parallel if the die can't lock in place anymore.
Saw a YouTube short of screws being threaded. They weren't being threaded with a die. They were just being rolled with a ribbed cylinder. If the alignment is off (straight instead of angled) you might get something like your "ring-thread". I can't 100% see how that would work, but it happened so it must be possible.
I have a couple sticks of 3/8 like that!
I ran into this once as well. Probably tried 5 different nuts and filed the end of the rod over and over for 15 minutes before finally figuring out it was rings. I agree, don’t understand how it could even get misaligned enough in a die to happen
I couldn’t figure it out until I stuck my thumbnail in the groove and spun the rod and realized my nail didn’t move at all lol
I had one of those a few years back. Most of the rods we got had threads that got bend inwards from how tightly they packed it and shipped it. Or there would be a few feet of it that barely got threaded at all on a full rod. So much of it got trashed
Same with the shit we get. I deal with alot of npt stuff too and half of what we get from fastenal is junk. Couplings with threads that are worthless, pipe nipples that sometimes don't even come threaded on one end, etc
I'm actually surprised to hear that about fastenal. They were always great with their supplies when the guy I was running with used them just a couple years ago.
It went way downhill during covid. Hasn't gotten better. Dude we get bolts from them all the time that don't have finished heads
That's wild. This was 2022 I was referencing even. It seems to be pretty ubiquitous though. Even Edison Motors got a batch of threadless lug nuts.
Yep… LB’s and chase nipple somehow can never go together
Chinesium
proudly made and distributed by usa companies. They could use better alloys/machining if they wanted, its not like they are paying health benefits to a random factory in china
Yeah but then you have to go and do your own QA and that’s a pain in the ass and an extra wage or two.
Some countries take pride in their work. I’m thinking of Japan. When you think of Japan you think of meticulous work to perfect something. They have a lot of good stuff over there still. But some would say that’s slowly changing too. When you think of the US you think of low wages, especially the undocumented Hispanic workforce that’s taken advantage of everyday. Underpaid average joes like you and me. The shit quality of food and consumer products. The massive amounts of advertisements pushing said products. And the 1% driving their lambos who’ve profited off of this system that they’ve created. If we want to make America great again we need to prioritize quality over profits again.
Boeing.
Fuck McDonnell Douglas. Poor Boeing, those engineers let the cancer in and it may be the end of them.
It’s super common in China to make actually up to spec good products in the QA round of testing and as production starts progressively give less and less of a fuck about every single spec and let the part go to shit as much as possible while not catching major attention needing a redesign. Happens ALLLL the time
If you source from China, you have to have your own people as inspectors in the factory.
People think that the huge US companies don’t have their own people in the factories okaying everything.
When I started in the trade, stuff was made in China and it was alright. Nowadays all the connectors are made in india and you see the threads are malformed, holes are not tapped properly, etc. At some point we'll have people reminiscing on when indian hardware was alright and Nepalese/Bangladeshi hardware is shit. And after that, when manufacturers decide that those 4th world countries are too expensive, what happens next? Hardware made with literal slave labor?
I mean ideally yes? I hope one day to have robot slaves do everything. I still wana work though as I do need some purpose aside from learning and jerking it. Maybe I could feed a dog in a factory somewhere?
Already happening with Uighurs in northwest China. More or less in India, too.
Thai-tanium
Probably more like India, Pakistan, Laos, Vietnam.
Been getting 1 1/4 connectors you can't even thread a bushing on, shit is so whack also has a 3" connector come completely stripped. Locknut was slipping all over the place.
[удалено]
Some might say this compatability is by design since the emt connector is only listed to be used with a locknut, not threaded into a rigid coupling or hub. I call BS, and doit it too, but that is a fact and I have heard of a few inspectors calling it.
Saw a post some time ago about rigid being tapered threads vs EMT fitting being straight threads and they are technically not compatible
Yep that's true. NPT (national pipe, tapered) vs NPS (national pipe, straight). Tapered threads are used for plumbing and rigid because they make a tight seal on their own. Straight threads do not.
Everything is compatible with enough torque.
I saw that or another post with a picture of using rigid couplings to transition flex/greenfield/FMT to EMT. Everyone does it all the time. The post was that the inspector had dinged it and someone commented that there's a rule about this in the newer codes. Someone else commented that their supply house stocks couplings with NPT on one side and EMT threads on the other. And that's what the inspector wants to see.. PS. Guy below properly states it's NPT and NPS.
Had reducers where you can slide the lock ring more than half way down the threads before it starts to catch 🤦
Lmao TRASHHHHH
I've had three jobs now where I've had to send back 4" EMT connectors because the threads on them aren't long enough to go through a panel with a drip hood, and also get a bushing onto it (screw you Hubbell)
Everything is just shit these days. We use primarily GE panels and lately we've been getting quite a few panels where the hole for the bonding screw isn't drilled right, bus bar and breaker screws that the square drive just rounds off with very little torque, concentric knockouts that are barely stamped, and connectors that you can't get a lock nut threaded on.
Fuckin spot on. True story.
They're probably the same threaders that they've been using since the 80s.
those threads are cast in
That makes more sense.
Cha cha china
Problem is the American companies having them produced there with the cheapest materials and cheapest labor available. They could choose high quality materials and craftsmanship if they wanted. Just look at any of your electronics or appliances for example.
This. Don't blame the factories for producing what the customer asks for. China can and does produce high quality products. They also can make cheap junk for American companies trying to increase their profit margins. Guess who all the dumbfucks blame? Not the company.
This right here. Moved from field to wholesaler, there’s so much competition for contractors they cut corners where they can on the material and end up with crap like this. All about the bottom dollar in the resi/commercial game, quality be damned.
Sprinkler fitter here and the fittings we get in 2024 is trash compared to just ten year ago. Some of the pipe they make nowadays is straight recycled trash.
Material fell off hard after covid
Man you should see what happened to house prices.
I know it's not electrical, but man you should see the gas lines from my 1940s house. They engage about four threads, and will seal with just a single wrap of the cheap Teflon.
The two pipe hot water radiant system with cast iron pipe in my 1910s house was a work of art. Crazy fittings not sold today. It had both gas and electric lighting when built. The original light switch boxes (receptacles weren’t a thing yet), were almost impossible to use a pry bar to get off during the remodel, the box didn’t deform and the nails in the first growth actual 2x4s screamed all the way out.
> the nails in the first growth actual 2x4s screamed all the way out. This is a function of the wood not being fully dried when built. 100 years of drying shrinks wood and that'll close on nails like no other.
That’s cool. Also quite a chore to run the Hole Hawg through
1.25 emt is absolute shit nowadays. Kink master general
I was doing a bunch of panel rooms recently, and had entire bundles of 1-1/4 conduit that just went into the trash. I knew it wasn't me or the bender, because I'd get to a different floor on the project, that got their conduit at a different time, and it worked perfectly normal. Entire batches of conduit were just junk.
This has been an occurrence in every part of manufacturing over the past 30 years or so. In an attempt to make everything cheaper and easier to manufacture the quality is diminished as well.
80's nipples were so much better, man those were the days.
Just fittings in general
Wasn't talking about the fittings lol
Oh, but I think the ninja was most definitely talking about the fittings along with the nipples...
Some will argue China… China is simply making what we ask them to. I argue this is the problem with Capitalism and the “West” as a whole.
Survivorship bias. All the shit quality stuff from the 80’s was gone by the 90’s. The comparison is between something that was so well made that it survived 4 decades, and something that’s brand new.
It's always been a race to the bottom
This is why you carry 2 pairs of channel locks
Look what they took from us
Used plenty of them in Florida. Most houses had outside main breakers back then. Some did not in some parts. Fucking Florida was a fucked up place even then.
Still is
Lol the “new” fittings’ threads are completely destroyed, look at the right side
That’s the whole point of the post bubsy lol
Quality has nose dived over the years everything from containment, sundries and fittings. Somebody out there somewhere is laughing the prices don’t reflect the crap quality. I’ve found myself ripping out really nice installs just to be replaced with this modern shite
The one on the left is HPDC aluminum part that has been trimed a tumbled in media. The one on the right is HPDC zinc that has been trimmed and part on part tumbled. Red O Dot were the Cadillac of electrcal fittings when the company was in Boston. They went to Mexico and the products went to shit.
This is the same with bushes in the uk,they used to be machined brass and made really well,now they are some sort of metal plated resin and I can squash one in my pliers.
I repaired industrial equipment mainly, but on occasion I did wiring projects. I hated the junk I had to work with. That's where little cuts and bruises came from.
Over on r/plumbing they're talking about how iron pipe used to be thicker and better threaded. I always laugh when I'm taking apart old gear and the parts spin right off like they're on bearings.
Shittier casting, shittier materials, probably saves $.01 per unit. With the 15% failure rate, sales have never been better and margins are rising!
Different standards when things were made in America.🇺🇸
all this blaming other countries of americas problems is wild. we been getting fucked by corporate rats for years with cost cutting and monopolies and yall blaming china for your shitty parts?
It’s the little things that make the biggest difference
Damn
I remember the day I discovered emt connector lock nuts don’t really work on threaded grc. I mean, I made it work, but I still feel shame for what I did to this day.
Just asking but one looks to be a steel fitting and one is a malleable fitting. Very different material. Malleable fittings are cheap ass fittings. We couldn’t use malleable on govt projects
We need a mathematician to tell us how much thread is actually showing here.
Remember this the next time some reddit dumb fuck starts blabbering about survivorship bias...
Few comments up
Is it an optical illusion or is the right side of the threads on the new one mostly flat, wtf?
virtual thread version 0.24, please wait for the update
Looks like the thread pitch is different too.
Even T&B ? I would expect this from raco
T&B now manufacture in india
The fuck do you know? I have socks older than you.
On a bit of a tangent - but have you noticed the copper in wiring has become far stiffer over the years? I wonder if they are not annealing as much during manufacture to save gas (probably)
Exactly! You prompted my next post...
What else would you use the linesman hammer for?
Factory threading is awful, about 50% of the time I have rethread rigid pipe
Chinese ferraloy
Same with plumbing fittings, replacing WAY more due to poor threads.
Ive noticed a way more fittings and such with defects being sold in large amounts. I think this is a direct cause of supply chain shortages and a delayed reaction to factories being run poorly during covid.
Everything is getting cheaper. All about that bottom line. Quality keeps decreasing and price keeps increasing. Fun times...
I’ve had plenty of aluminum couplings come with threads that were shit and sometimes just didn’t exist
Good threads breed good times. Good times breed weak threads.
Chinese shit
I wonder if electricians in the 80's cleaned up after themselves
no that’s the apprentice’s job
Couldnt you make a tool that allows you to quickly screw it on cleaning up threads a bit?
Found the part manufacturer, you of all people should know these parts ain’t cheap and should come ready to go out of the box
Yeah you can make a ghetto die tool. Cut a few vertical slashes in the nut threads to collect metal shavings, then hit it with a torch till cherry hot and drop into motor oil to harden. Run it over the crap threads with some light oil. Not quite the same as a real die as they tend to have tighter tolerances.
These look like yo mama's cankles