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Real sourcing challenge: “We traveled to China to see three different MCB automation vendors. The first vendor had a very large 30-meter line with a cost of $1M. This is way too large for our plant; it would not fit in our building. The second vendor had a benchtop unit that manufactured one MCB at […]

Real production delay: “We arranged a complete ACB test for our 4,000-amp main breaker over a weekend in a shut down. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to inspect the ETU comm interface cable and the mechanical fixture to install the energy storage type of mechanism was lost. The test was delayed two weeks and […]

Real production problem: The production manager of a medium voltage switchgear manufacturer reported that they were experiencing inconsistent trip times on their MCCB long time calibration bench with regards to the morning and the afternoon. Upon investigation into the cause of this phenomenon, it was discovered that there was a temperature change of 12°C within […]

Real safety incident: “A factory’s 100A MCCB failed to trip when a short circuit occurred. The downstream panel exploded and injured an electrician as a result of the breaker not having been tested in eight years; the thermal mechanism was stuck in place from the long term usage of it.” – Maintenance manager, industrial plant […]

Real field failure: “A new hotel had 500 wall switches installed. Three months later, twelve of those switches were malfunctioning because their contacts had welded together. The supplier had performed only a basic continuity test, not a full endurance test of the product.” – Project manager, a contractor specializing in commercial electrical installations. Besides just […]

Real production headache: The manually soldered silver contacts on our MCCB terminals have a failure rate of 0.8% due to intermittent high resistance, with occasional contact loss from the MCCB terminals during the dielectric test. We required an inspectable and repeatable process. — Manufacturing Executive, a switchgear manufacturer in Southeast Asian Region. A machine called […]