Some folks keep trying to get stuff cheaper & cheaper, this is a result.
I guess we don't have to ask where it was made.
Looks like a fuse inside. What current rating, I might guess, is likely much higher than the claimed rating...
I guess it wont be a pain with nussiance tripping!! Seriously if they find the persons responsible they should hang them from a flag pole.
The actual ON / OFF switch doesn't control anything.
For sure if you want to turn it on it would just drop down to off again.
Also the weight difference should be a giveaway to any sparky fitting these MCB's.
I wonder how many of these fake MCB's are floating around or is it just a one off April fools joke.
Just another reason for someone to invent a means to actually TEST breakers in the field.
Let's face it; we have no idea what's inside any breaker, or whether it will operate when needed. We have no way to determine that an older breaker has been damaged over time. We must simply take it all on faith.
Today it's breakers; not so long ago, it was fake GFCI's ... pushing the 'test' button simply shut the thing off. Some 'test!'
Add bogus AFCI breakers to the equation, and the field is ripe for a rash of fake products.
If Square D's reaction to AFCI "testers" is any indication, they will strongly oppose the development of ANY test equipment that isn't made by them.
A breaker tester is a couple hair dryers (typically about 1400-1500w no matter what the writing says on the barrel)
http://esteroriverheights.com/electrical/1875w_hair_dryer.jpg
Greg, the problem there is... what if your test fails? There's really no good safe way for a field test short of an actual breaker tester. Which is required when calibrating some of the more sophisticated breakers, but I can't see it happening for anything short of a 1200A ACB.
Ya know, honestly, the LEAST they could have done was used #18 wire for the jumper so it would act as a fuse! Would have saved them even more money, too, and maybe keep them tied up in litigation vice a homicide trial if/when they get caught.
If you put a 25a load on a 14ga circuit for a short time nothing bad should happen if the breaker didn't trip. Particularly true if this was just a duplex on a pigtail, connected directly to the breaker. Were you trying to test the building wiring or just the breaker?
You might be able to test the overload protection by connecting directly to the breaker, but there is no safe way to field test the short circuit protection.
Even if you series wired say a 15 amp breaker and a 20 amp fuse and imposed a dead short you might get a nice arc setting the house on fire or killing you. Or you might give the breaker just that last kick it needed to fail next time it should trip...
You know, they could have at least used a 15 amp fuse-link, it probably would've been cheaper, and it would've actually been a relitively safe product (assuming the on.off switch worked?)
From looking at this I'd guess the switch does not work at all - so it's easy to spot the issue.
Looking at the upper left corner in that picture of it, those look to be switch contacts. Essentially, if true, it's just a light switch. Then it would seem to be functional when you want to shut a circuit down.
I have been thinking about your breaker tester. The problem is how do you bleed off all the energy your test uses?
That is why I suggested the hair dryers. Certainly a "real" tester would be packaged differently with a good amp meter and maybe even an onboard computer, storage, test protocols with USB and printer interface but it would still have a lot of toaster wire and a big fan.