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Fake circuit breakers

broadgage
Seem to be on the increase.

Makes me wonder if we should be testing samples before installation ?

A full and proper test requires relatively elaborate lab facilities, but perhaps a crude test involving say a vehicle battery and a 100 amp fuse.

This wont reveal all faults, but would at least weed out the most blatant "no trip" types.

An MCB tested thus might of course have been damaged, so perhaps test the odd sample and only install untested examples from the same batch. Rather expensive though.
youtube. fake MCB dismantled
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    To safely trip an MCB on a car battery without burning the electrodes requires you to keep the PSSC well  below 6KA., and the voltage low enough not to draw an arc.

    I suggest the average set of economy jump leads will do quite a lot of that current limiting without too much difficulty, and the pssc of most car batteries is in the single figures of KA anyway, at least in cars, perhaps not in some monster truck.

    The one in Mrs Mapj's car got changed when the internal resistance rose above about 8milliohms, as at that point the auto start-stop stops working, the new one was about half of that. - so a PSSC of perhaps 3 to 4 kA.

    Mike

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  • 0
    To safely trip an MCB on a car battery without burning the electrodes requires you to keep the PSSC well  below 6KA., and the voltage low enough not to draw an arc.

    I suggest the average set of economy jump leads will do quite a lot of that current limiting without too much difficulty, and the pssc of most car batteries is in the single figures of KA anyway, at least in cars, perhaps not in some monster truck.

    The one in Mrs Mapj's car got changed when the internal resistance rose above about 8milliohms, as at that point the auto start-stop stops working, the new one was about half of that. - so a PSSC of perhaps 3 to 4 kA.

    Mike

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