ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Are US breakers typically thermal-magnetic?

My thinking on FP breakers is that they had a batch of bad ones. Perhaps they fixed the design or just tightened up the manufacturing process but bad reputations are forever, particularly when politics is involved and the CPSC is a political organization more than a safety organization.

Thank you, JBD, for the correction

Reno:

I was/am under the impression that a 'stab-loc' replacement was being made by a company called 'American Breaker'. Same style, black handle, white numbers. Did I miss something with Schneider?

UBI makes Chinese knockoffs of FPE Stab-Lok, ITE Pushmatic,& Zinsco breakers.

Interesting...I guess if there's any size market....Chinese knockoff factories jump right in!

There is a Chinese firm called "Unique Breaker" or "UBI" making replacements for FPE, Pushmatic, etc. The breakers are ETL, but not UL, listed.

Reno,


I was doing inspection for this big senior citizen complex here in NJ. 10 buildings, 5 floors, 23 apt per floor, etc. The EC had two very large shipments of GFCI receptacles. 1 from China and 1 from south of the border. ( Not sure if Mexico or somewhere down there.)
Anyway, of the two big batches, they started to have failures in all of the GFCI receptacles. When they checked it out, it was one of the 2 batches that were all going bad.
Unfortunately, I don't remember which region they came from. The point being is that all the bad GFI's were from the same geological area.

Harold:
I had a similar situation a while back with GFI the EC purchased 'mail order' from someplace in Gregs state.

They were asian, an TUV and a strange looking UL symbol on the individual package. As they started installing them and doing the testing.....defective units were plentiful. The EC made, IMHO, a smart move by stopping the installation until he got devices from a local source. Two of the GFI devices were sent to UL, and I am not aware of any follow-up.

I can't say I have come accross any of the asian items Reno mentioned. Three large townhouse complexes are in the process of changing out all the FPE panels; about 450 total units.

"Don't remember." Sure, and I can't recall what sort of restaurant uses chopsticks either.

I can't tell businesses how to act wisely. As far as I'm concerned, this whole import mess is a shining opportunity for UL to market the value of its' trademark. They need to assert that they're not just another test lab- and back off from all this ISO 9000, 'international standards' codswhallop. They need to crow "We're NOT just like everyone else."

Why should there be 'international standards?' While the breaker makers might snicker that their cleverly different design prevents others from competing, it also means that they will miss the opportunity to push the other guy aside.

Maybe we place too much on the 'listing and labling' issue. Imagine ... if everyone was actually expected to judge for themselves whether something was adequate? The avarice of the factory would be balanced by their need to convince the customer that their improvements were worth money.

Heck, using standard industrial components, I can turn an ordinary pull can into one heck of a panel - and if Allen-Bradley stops making the breaker I want, I can just snap a Telemechanique onto that same DIN rail!

We have the best engineers in the world - how about we let them actually be engineers?

I am not sure if it is true but the legend is that Miami is ground zero for importing counterfeits of just about anything.