Cam-Lok (camlock)

Cam-Lok began as a trademark and has become the trade word for a family of interchangeable single-pole, cam-actuated connectors used for high-current temporary power in North America. Each conductor gets its own connector, so a three-phase service arrives as five separate cables rather than one.

The common series is rated at 400 amps and is what a 400 amp service lands on; a smaller series, usually called mini-cam, is rated at 150. Event services are typically specified at 100, 200 or 400 amps, and a 400 amp feeder is normally 4/0 cable.

The colours are where a glossary has to be careful. Green is ground and white is neutral, and those two are set by the electrical code. The phase colours — commonly black, red and blue — are industry convention, not code, and sources genuinely disagree about which phase is which. Travelling productions and international crews bring their own habits. The only safe practice is to meter rather than assume, and that is the professional norm rather than caution.

The connection order is not a preference either. Ground goes on first and comes off last, with the neutral next, so that there is never a moment where live conductors are connected and the ground is not. A crew that reverses that order has built a fault path through whatever is plugged in.

Corporate event production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Feeder cable The heavy single-conductor cable between the power source and the distro — one conductor per jacket, run in sets, and governed on site by where people walk.
• Company switch The venue’s connection point for temporary power — a protected tap installed so a production can land feeder without touching the building’s panels.
• Three-phase power The service nearly every event runs on — three live conductors and a neutral, giving 120 volts to neutral and 208 between phases, which is not 240 and not an arithmetic sum.