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iksbob t1_iydg236 wrote

Based purely on the labeling and hole spacing, they're giving you 3 terminal strips, plus one for ground.

The reason for the strips is that combining stranded wire and solid wire in a single connector (whether screw-type or wire nut) can be precarious. The solid wire can provide much more mechanical support, making the connection feel tight while the stranded wire can still slip out or is poorly connected.

Back to the fixture plate, under "FLEX N" you have 3 ports ganged together. This should be the neutral/return wire of your lighting circuit/loop - the wire returning to your breaker (or previous light fixture), a wire returning from the next light fixture, and the neutral/return of your light.

Next is "LOOP IN" with 3 ports that should be connected to each other but not the first 3 "N" ports. This is the hot/supply/live/line wire of your lighting circuit. The 3 ports should be: power supplied from your breaker, power out to your next fixture, and constant power out to your light switch.

The final 2 "FLEX L" ports (again, connected to each other but none of the previous 6 ports) should be switched hot/line returning from the wall switch, and the light fixture's hot/line wire.

All together, the strip accepts the power connections from the breaker or previous light fixture on the circuit/loop (2 solid wires), the next fixture on the circuit/loop (2 solid wires), the wires to the wall switch (2 solid wires), and the wires to the light fixture (2 stranded wires).

An observation: the left-most red wire on the terminal strip looks like it gets skinny a cm or two from the strip. It could just be bending behind the black wire (which has a speck of white paint or something on it), or the wire could be broken inside the insulation. If it's skinny, give it a wiggle and see if it bends easily at the thin spot.

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