My electricians were tracing an open in a 3 ph 480V cct in a parking lot. It originates in a large metal building with a dozen panelboards in it. They too rely on the Tic Tracers, hell, I purchasedthe ones they use for them. But in a manhole or handhole full of other circuits, with someone turning on and off the source breaker, they were just spinning their wheels. They would get signals in one place and not the other, but when they cut open the circuit, they were wrong. I kept telling them to not rely on them. I also have analog & digital versions of 3M Dynatel cable path locators they tried to use. Finally, I just told them they have to fall back on our old methods as this was just starting to cost too much. The parking lot is about 30 acres and only some of the circuits are tagged. I guess the last straw was when one of my electricians used his own Harris telephone type tone generator and toner. He forgot to pull it from the line side of the panel they were trying to locate before he energized the feeder breaker, and, you guessed it, let the smoke out. Within 4 hours they had located the burned up cable, and that was that. In this case, nobody got hurt, but they could have if they had trusted the ticker only.
