subject: Several Causes of Failure in a Circuit Breaker [print this page] Several Causes of Failure in a Circuit Breaker
Circuit breaker is a certain switch in your electronic system that could remove electrical power from a circuit in some emergency situations. It will automatically open when the electrical current that passes through is over the rating. You will find the easiest example in household circuit. You will find circuit breakers there that are usually rated at either 15 or 20 amperes. They work well to protect your household appliances from having excessive electrical current, which could damage or even put the devices on fire.
However, in some cases, circuit breakers work in failure so they could not bring total protection to you and to the appliances. One of the most common causes for of the failure is the lubrication. Lubrication is very important to allow smooth physical movement when the breakers are automatically open. Therefore, the manufacturers usually lubricate the moving parts in order to make them move smoothly and correctly. However, lubrication could be ineffective for some environments.
You can also find several other causes of failure in your system, such as faulty breaker components, dirt and debris, as well as corrosion. Some out of tolerance parts as well as material defects is also considered as the causes of the failure.
Since circuit breaker is considered as safety device, failure is a very crucial thing that should be fixed soon. It could lead to some serious problems such as fires due to the heating as the effect of the excess current. Therefore, it will be better for you to use breakers in high quality and operate them in not-open environment to prevent any debris and dirt. Usually, most of them are kept from contact to the environment simply by locating them in a breaker box.
Then how to prevent this problem? The most effective prevention is by inspecting your breakers periodically. It will be very useful to help you make sure that there dirt or debris is not built up there. Besides, you should also check some signs of corrosion on this device, especially in climates with higher humidity level. If you find some signs of corrosion, you need to immediately replace your circuit breaker with the new one.
You might also find some people who believe that resetting a circuit breaker could solve the failure since it removes electricity from the associated circuit. You have to notice that this is not absolutely correct. You have to make sure that there might be something on the circuit that draws too much current and it might occur occasionally. Therefore, you have to regularly monitor the devices on the circuit to check on some devices that might be overheated by the excessive current draw.
By having that information with you, hopefully you could be more thoughtful in handling the failure of your circuit breakers. Therefore, the risk of fire could be significantly reduced.
