OT breaker panel

any sparkies in the house? I noticed some yellow arcing where a breaker was contacting the hot side buss bar which usually indicates a poor connection. this panel is in my shop & is mostly empty. I moved the breaker to a lower position & it there was no connection. I hit the buss bar & the breaker with a wire wheel & sprayed them both with electrical contact cleaner. I moved the breaker to another part of the buss bar & it is now working fine. I checked the lower part of the buss bar where I had no connection with a meter & it had proper voltage. any ideas why i'm not getting contact on that part of the buss bar???
 
(quoted from post at 12:26:30 02/24/19) any sparkies in the house? I noticed some yellow arcing where a breaker was contacting the hot side buss bar which usually indicates a poor connection. this panel is in my shop & is mostly empty. I moved the breaker to a lower position & it there was no connection. I hit the buss bar & the breaker with a wire wheel & sprayed them both with electrical contact cleaner. I moved the breaker to another part of the buss bar & it is now working fine. I checked the lower part of the buss bar where I had no connection with a meter & it had proper voltage. any ideas why i'm not getting contact on that part of the buss bar???

Did you put the breaker back in that slot after cleaning everything?

TOH
 
Must be just enough corrosion that it won't make the connection or some wear on the contact.

I would be wondering about that breaker. You don't want arcing and one question to ask was why it started arcing in the first place. Breakers are cheap and if you had a fire and you told the insurance adjuster this story he would not be impressed.
 
yes I put in that slot & got an iffy connection again. I then moved it up 2 spaces & it worked. i'm going to buy a couple new breakers & see what that does. I just thought it was queer that this breaker works in 1 slot & not another. this is a used panel that I had salvaged from another location & it was working fine there. if push comes to shove i'm upgrading my house to a 200 amp service soon. when I do that I can move the 125 amp panel that's currently in the house to my shop. 125 amps is more than enough in the shop. i'm also wondering if I should install a sub-panel to feed the shop when I do the upgrade. i'm off to buy breakers....
 
replaced the breaker & wire brushed the buss bar again. put the new breaker back in the original slot & it worked. moved it to the bottom 3 slots & it did not work. since I now consider this panel temporary i'll live with it until I replace it. for safety i'll kill the power when i'm not working in the shop.
at lowes ( it's sunday ) they had 2 siemen tandom 20 amp breakers that specced out the same. 1 was was $9.49 & the other was $22.95. they were numbered 2020U & 2020NC. the NC was the higher priced breaker. I looked them up & the NC suffix specced as being non-current limiting. what is a non-current limiting breaker?
 
An 'NC' breaker is similar to the 'slo-blow' fuse of old. It allows, for a short time, an overload before breaking the connection. Good on a motor circuit.
 
thanks for that. one thing about 'NC' breakers that I find worrisome is that most people who shop at lowes will not even notice that these breakers are different. I did find that these breakers are not compatible with most breaker panels & could be dangerous when used in them. these should probably only be sold in professional supply houses.
 

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