On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 22:39:54 -0400,
wrote:
On Sat, 04 Jun 2005 18:59:35 -0700, footy wrote:

Type F, as in Federal Pacific or Federal Pioneer panel? If so, your
work may just be beginning. Apparently, the Federal breakers will not
reliably trip on overload. Don't know about replacements manufacturered
by other companies. You might want to do a search of the internet
with keywords "Federal Pacific breaker" or something similar.

New ones are apparently OK - it is just after years of use they
degrade. From what my dad, a retired "sparky" says, anyway.

This is a point of contention in the industry. All the replacement
breakers I've seen (both the American Breaker "OEM" replacements and
the Taiwan copies) are duplicated mold and tooling knock-offs of the
original, not redesigned to increase the reliability even though they
have reason to know there is a problem.

I suspect that if you put the brand-new parts through the same
testing, they would be failing at the same rates - I would do it
myself but I don't have the testing equipment.

Bad design is bad design, making new 'duplicate' copies of a bad
design does not make it any better. If anything, copies made by
people who don't understand how minute changes in materials, sloppy
tolerances or wear on the tooling affects the end product can make
them even worse.

And the Taiwan folks can churn out the junk and sleep at night
knowing they can't be sued for product liability because the laws are
lax to non-existent, no matter how faulty the product...

-- Bruce --

--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
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