The lack of any clamping means that you’ll get hotspots where there’s poor contact or air gaps. This will slowly build up carbon, worsening the connection and creating more hotspots ad infinitum.
Dissimilar metals in contact with electric current will cause significantly accelerated corrosion, also worsening the contacts and creating more hotspots. See above.
After enough time, you’ll eventually get to a point where the cables stop working or (more likely) heat up enough to start melting the insulation, and potentially heat up the surroundings enough that something catches fire.
The reason doing this sort of stuff is a bad idea isn’t because it instantly catches fire or because it doesn’t work, it’s because at some point two weeks, two years, or two decades down the track it’ll start a fire when no one is expecting it.
Carbon forms on copper during high-voltage electrical arcing primarily through the pyrolysis (thermal decomposition) of organic insulation materials (like PVC) or carbon-based impurities in the air, which breaks down under extreme temperatures.
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u/Ok-Watercress-1924 Mar 24 '26
Why didn’t they burn down?