The center fuse was not seated properly!

There is no excuse for this type of work by anyone!!

Joe is that u-shaped metal spring clip supposed to be there?

I've seen people use similar shaped pieces of spring steel to clip papers together.

I see what looks like the outline of another clip in the lower fuse, but I thought the fuse was supposed to be held in place by the spring action of the terminals the fuse blades slide into?

We've all heard the saying "haste makes waste"...it kinda looks like this person was in an awful big hurry

Mike (mamills)

Looking at the pic carefully, this looks like a cronic overheating problem that is at the fail point.

The discoloration of the "b" phase fuseholder, and the fuse are usually caused by excessive heat. As the fuse clips heat-up, they get metal fatigue, and loose the spring tension, further aggravating the heating situation.

The "metal clips" are spring steel, that is factory installed on "A" & "C" phases; the piece on "b" looks like a "band-aid" fix that didn't work well.

THe fuse mfg's (Bussman) used to make a fuseholder clip retrofit for clips that had failed spring tension. I don't know if they are still available; they were OK IF you caught the tension failure early.

I would like to see the "B" fuse out of the fuseholder, to see if that's a "split" in the copper or some fancy attempt at machine work.

John

Hotline1
Looking at the phase B fuse. It looks like they installed one end (the one not pictured) somewhat correctly. And used the tension form that knife blade to press the pictured end of the fuse onto the fuseholder terminals. It sort of looks like the blade was split, but I think there was just arcing and it made a carbon path to the blade. That would also explain why the silver end part is crooked, the black part of the fuse was able to straighten out after it overheated.

to me it looks like the fuse contact was put under the socket, not in it.
the thing that looks like split is the socket on top and the fuse's contact on bottom. the black line looking like the split is the shadow the holder throws on the fuse's contact.

:andy:,

About the fuse blade. I was trying to say the blade was under the socket. You said it better than I could. Hovever, I don't think that's a shadow, I think its a gap between the clip and blade.

It looks to me as though the whole clip assembly on that middle phase has been cobbled together as what in Britain we would call a "bodge."

It doesn't even look like the original bolt holding the clip down: Philips head vs. straight on the bottom phase.

Did someone take a hacksaw and cut the blade on the fuse down the middle? Tis thing is a real bodge. CHEERS!

The fuse or the fuse clip are not split.The tension clip that you see is right where it is supposed to be. The fuse blade was not inserted into the fuse clip, but instead, the blade was placed below the fuse clip..The lower part of the fuse clip has darkened from overheating but it is still intact.
Maybe this disconnect takes care of the lighting and the installer didn't have a flashlight with him at the time of install

thats no excuse. check your work before you close the cover!

That looks like a 200A fuse, and they simply missed when they installed that end... Did they perhaps try to replace the fuse under load??? It must have put on quite a show with an arc like that, If that is the hot side, that silly fuse may not even be blown! I hope whoever did this survived to learn a lesson.

i guess this was running for a longer time, as the smoke ran up to the top fuse.