Federal Electric Circuit Breakers
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- Some very large Federal Electric circuit breakers, from an even larger 3 phase distribution board.
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Given the age of these devices, I wonder if the fibrous material holding the quench stack together is asbestos.
From the thumbnail I honestly thought you got your hands on some North American style circuit breakers. They sure look like them.
Sadly FE stuff is much like north american breakers :(
These Federal breakers are a LOT more modern than current day American products!
Similar arrangement it seems so it makes sense- two separate either side with the neutral in the middle 120° apart in phase instead of 180°, and 240v instead of 110v, but very similar.
With a name like Federal Electric, I was expecting this to be from an american electrical system.
There was an American Federal Pacific brand (aka Stab-Lok) that earned a terrible reputation for a series of their breakers having a high failure rate--not tripping when they should, and not isolating the circuit when switched off. They were recalled sone years ago, but I've seen them in homes recently still.
Ah, that's what I was thinking of. I kept thinking "wasn't this the bad kind that doesn't actually trip and just burns down your house instead?".
Yeah I don't know why they're still out there but they are. Presumably because of the cost to replace them, they couldn't mandate it?
Stab lock federal pacific . Some had like a 60% failure rate. There is some drama with them, they continued to make breakers under different brand names, without an official listings since it was revoked in the 80s I think, but kept using the listing sticker up until at least 2002 with the old flawed design.
@@PatrickRigney I think the fact they completely omitted half the damn protection in this breaker proves this is the same company
The logo has a striking resemblance to Federal Pacific. FPE Stab-Loc breakers will burn your house down!
Interesting. As different as this is from modern UK equivalents, it looks very much similar to a typical North American service panel (at least in terms of layout, form-factor, and generalized schematic).
Love the vintage stuff, thanks JW
Some brave maggots made casters in the arc chamber of a 3 phase CB. ( See when. JW removes the chamber at about 5.03)
There are no three phase breakers in this video, but I was was wondering what those were, you have great eyes 👀
New stuff might be small, but old stuff was built to last forever.
If you're willing to pay for it so will a lot of new stuff. For example old jet engines could only imagine for as long between servicing that is considered the minimum acceptable today.
It's junk. Doesn't trip on magnetic
ol/fault. Only trips on heat.
@@apestasguey Features aren't a replacement for build quality. That is a very common misconception, with a great example being modern household appliances.
@@LakeNipissing circuit breakers are for safety. Theses must not have an available fault current rating either. Not a safe item. Good safe reliable items exist now more than ever ok
@@apestasguey Exactly what John said!
Boris Johnsons circuit breaker : FAIL
JW circuit breaker : YES
JW for circuit breaker solutions please
Another ❤️ from JW.... I feel restored..... Thanks for the great content by the way
It's Earth day today April 22nd. I'm wearing my green and yellow socks.
interesting... I am going to guess this is the same company as the American Federal Pacific Electric panels, the breakers are obviously completely different than what are in the Stab-lok panels, and these are designed well i guess, but the picture that shows the whole panel has the logo which is almost the same as the old Federal Pacific Electric logo, besides instead of saying FPE and Federal Pacific it just says Federal Electric, but everything else is the same, the colors, the letters, and the little lightning bolt.
The US version (Federal Pacific) were notorious for not tripping -- EVER! Thanks for showing us the guts. It's always a treat.
"Fire Producing Electric"
I do appreciate the vintage show and tells, I'd not heard for Federal before.
Reminds me very much of the type of CB used in 1960s GM locos. It's a pity the rating label is missing, but the ones I was familiar with were DC rated and made in the US.
Very chonky.
no way should that crap ever have been allowed as circuit protection. A BS3036 fuse is infinitely better, no wonder that company was hated in the US
@Lucky Joestar The name and design are eerily similar. Perhaps they’re connected in some way.
Really enjoy the retro electrical fittings. Federal was a brand I've seen in very old Australian fuse boards.
In the United States, we commonly use this type of "switch-board" or "panel-board" configuration for 3-phase 277/480-volt power distribution (347/600-volt in Canada) ... in particular, in large commercial establishments & larger industrial facilities. Similar panel-boards are typically used for industrial lighting circuits that operate @ 277/480 VAC; 60~Hz. Although finding 50-ampere single-pole circuit breakers installed inside of such equipment is exceedingly rare, smaller circuit breaker values are oftentimes found in single-pole formats for used on 277-volt lighting circuits, typically rated @ 15 or 20 amperes (for discharge lighting, metal-halide, or mercury-vapor lighting types (now obsolete, as LED lighting has proliferated the market, alongside with more energy efficient fluorescent T-5 lamps, for industrial warehouse "high-bays", and oftentimes, such lighting fixtures are also fitted with motion sensing devices to automatically sense human presence and automatically turn off after a preset time frame ranging from a few minutes and up to a few hours at a time... Some lighting panel-boards are also fitted with an electrical contactor to remotely switch all of the circuits contained within from a single 120-volt control-circuit & switch, a real convenience when turning the lights on or off in a large commercial or industrial space, especially when using multiple lighting circuits.
A popular brand or manufacture of electrical distribution equipment back in the 1960's & 1970's in North America was Federal Pacific (in the U.S.A.) or Federal Pioneer (in the Canadian market)... It looks like, based upon the logo on the equipment, that Federal Electric was an "American-style" panel board destined for the European market... Possibly from the same company too... however, Federal Pacific/Pioneer fell out of favor in the 1990's. due to their poor safety reputation, high failure rates, and a loss of U.L. listings on their circuit-breakers, as well as their load-centers & panel-boards, specifically the ones used in domestic 120/240-volt 3-wire single/split-phase applications, as such, these items had confined wiring spaces inside of them, of which did not comply with numerous code requirements as specified in the National Electrical Code, as well as circuit-breakers not tripping under short-circuit or overloaded fault conditions, hence the high rates of failure & elevated risks of fire & electrical shock associated with these obsolete designs.
In this present day, domestic electrical distribution equipment in the United States & Canada in particular, are generally manufactured & branded by the likes of Square-D, Siemens, Eaton/Cuttler-Hammer, or General Electric... all of which share in common, tried & true features & engineering in electrical design, and with a much reliably lower rate of electrical or mechanical failure from typical use under normal conditions.
To my knowledge, Federal Pacific Electric (FPE) still is in business, but no longer manufactures or sells electrical distribution equipment (switch-gear, switch-boards, panel-boards or load-centers... but manufactures commercial/industrial power transformers that are commonly in use in larger commercial & industrial environments for adapting various voltages like 277/480 WYE or DELTA and stepping it down to 120/208 WYE or 3-phase 240V DELTA... or even European voltages (240/415) for adapting specific pieces of industrial process equipment that was imported from outside the North American economy.
I recognize the copper buss-bars used in the equipment as featured in your video as being typically rated at 1,000 amperes per square-inch... with the total ampacity or current carrying rating of the equipment only being limited to the size of the main lugs, feeder conductors and the main circuit-breaker, if installed... In the United States in particular, main breakers are typically only associated with switch-gear, switch-boards, panel-boards or load-centers that are intended for use as "service-equipment" and identified as a "first disconnecting means" as worded in the National Electrical Code. At this location, and only at this location, is where neutral conductors are bonded to grounding or earthing conductors/electrodes. All sub-panels downstream are typically of the "main-lug" type, as the main breakers for these are typically a branch circuit-breaker located in the next piece of distribution equipment as installed or configured upstream in the power distribution system, with the exception to this rule being given to transformer-derived neutral conductors in equipment downstream from the designated "service disconnect." The service neutral termination at the utility transformer is also bonded to ground/earth as well, although no dedicated grounding/earthing conductor exists in the main service feeder as provided by the local electrical utility, but the supplied neutral conductor does double-duty as being maintained at a reference zero-voltage earth-potential, when used in a solidly-grounded/earthed electrical system.
In north America, all electric installations are governed or regulated in this manner, as no strange earthing/grounding arrangements exists or are permitted, as they apparently are permitted in areas as found in the U.K. or in mainland Europe.
In fact, some electrical installations in North America aren't solidly grounded/earthed at all! These are typically larger installations though, and are fed through banks of power transformers in an UNGROUNDED DELTA configuration. Ground-Fault Detectors are required to alert facilities maintenance personnel of a ground/earth-fault condition, as under one ground-faulted phase, the electrical system will appear to be operating normally, and these types of faults are typically intermittent in nature, requires endless hours of troubleshooting, and are oftentimes caused by a faulty motor somewhere that is cycling on & off. Such systems are also found in hospitals or medical centers, where reliability is a must, and emergency disconnection under a fault condition will cause obvious hazards. This form of redundancy ensures continuous operation even after the 1st ground-fault, as such a system with one ground-fault isn't completely short-circuited and thus will continue to operate normally as expected.
Some circuit-breakers for these pieces of electrical distribution equipment are in fact, "bolt-on" as a method of mechanically interfacing with the busing... however this is typically used for equipment scaled up for commercial/industrial application, as a more economical "plug-in" variety has been developed for smaller/lighter scaled-down commercial & residential/domestic application. Most brands/manufacturers in the U.S. domestic market/economy uses similar design principles to their product lines. Square-D does have a product lineup that they're marketing as "Square-D I-Line", as such they offer industrial power distribution equipment with large-format moulded-case circuit breakers with current ratings of up to 4,000 amperes and with a plug-in format for use in their switch-gear, switch-boards & buss-ways or buss-ducts.
0:32 switchgear with voltage present, what do you know 🤷
Quite a satisfying ca-chunk on those.
Fair play - I can't help but admire how well this thing was put together. You seldom find anything these days that are this well built and subtantial.
unfortunately it missed half the tripping mechanism, but other than that fine
American, or made elsewhere to the US equipment styles. I have worked on many of them.
Everything is *BIG.* And cheapish. Looks very 1950s.
I'm sure I had to buy one of those MCBs back in the 80sfir a job. Can't remember the price of it.
The first thing I did notice about the Federal case was the good amount of cable room below the switch. New boards are shorter, yes, but I end up fitting a cable inlet box to prevent excess bending of cables below the main switch and stress on the switch from forcing the badly dressed cables in.
Them MCBs must have been fit for purpose in the old days or surely they would have been manufactured and sold. Reminds me a bit of the old MK Sentry TP&N dust board. I wonder what happened to Federal. Maybe they moved into parcel delivery, 😂😂😂.
Good vid JW, keep em coming 👍👍
They were rated for the wire size to survive fault currents, so your 20A breaker would have a 4mm cable, and your 10A breaker would be for lighting, using 2.5mm cable. The 30A for your stove would use 6mm cable as well. Lots of copper because the large thermal mass to not overheat before a fault is cleared, though you also would find the 80A supply fuse failing more often than not on a dead short.
Never seen them here is South Africa, but the similar sized Fuchs and Heinemann breakers are still very common to find in old buildings, along with some truly massive versions, that were meant for motor control applications, where they actually had, along with a thermal and magnetic trip capacity, a dashpot that gave you a delay on tripping to handle motor starting current surges. Yes they had a really satisfying clunk on operation, though tripping on them was really loud as well.
I think "Federal Electric" was the UK version of " Federal Pacific Electric" (usa) and " Federal Pioneer Electric"(Canada)...
The logo on the panel looks similar and those breakers look similar to some old ones here.... These were not the problematic ones that were said not to trip.
the video proves these were actually DESIGNED not to trip
@@TheChipmunk2008 Not really, they will trip but they are slow.
Reminds me of the older Heinemann full size breakers ,and the similar sized Fuchs breakers that were common in use in the 1960's and early 1970's, before being replaced by miniature breakers. Yes thermal alone, which is why your wiring for them was 4mm for a 20A breaker, to survive the fault current for the time it takes the breaker to trip on a short circuit. With the magnetic version you could use a lower rated cable of 2.5mm, without the cable burning open.
Issue with those was that if you had a fault close to the breaker, within the first 5m or so, you would not trip the breaker, till after the supply fuse by the meter had gone open circuit, so you would be left without power till the electrical supplier changed out that fuse in the meter. But at least the thermal inertia would tell you which circuit had the fault on it.
Those breakers are MCCBs, they used to make MCBs of a similar size to the normal ones you would see. They plugged into the disboards rather than being screwed in. Why did we put them in? They were relatively cheap.
Federal Electrical was based in Wolverhampton. The brand is now owned by Schneider Electrical. These breakers are an American design that was tested to U.K. Standards.
You're certainly going to be crispy fried before one of those things trips. Interesting video though, thanks John.
There's a ton of silver in those breakers, save the metal!
Except the contacts are silver-cadmium, then beware
JW- another interesting article- might be worth mentioning the risks posed by asbestos in older equipment, and the sad fact that older electricians are over represented in the deaths from asbestosis.
I reckon that's primarily from drilling holes into asbestos-reinforced electrical panels.
Any time you're disturbing wall or ceiling space in older buildings you run that risk.
the arc chamber looks more costly than a whole modern breaker
Do those ones have the same issues that the North American Federal breakers do? Huge numbers of lawsuits over those things failing and catching fire..
Not that I know of - Federal circuit breakers are fairly rare items in the UK, when they were available they were typically only used for commercial installations.
Smaller versions for homes did exist, but they were never popular even when they were available. Would be exceptionally unusual to find any in a domestic installation today.
John do a video on how to install a isolation switch
Federal Electric \Federal Pioneer I think was a North American company who manufactured in Wolverhampton up until the late 1980's early 1990's. they were acquired by Merlin Gerin/Schneider Electric along with their acquisition of Square D in the US. Those breakers being non-current limiting had a breaking capacity of less than 3KA.
They might be old but they don't melt. We have similar down here under the name Quicklag . Still available with magnetic tripping and RCD.
Hi JW, somebody asked me today what I meant when I referred to a besa box on the wall, I showed him and then he went on to ask why is it a besa box. Um.... Well... I didn't know for certain I said but I think BESA is some sort of technical association, like British Electrical Standards Association. I said I wasn't 100% sure and we had to look it up. We found the Building Engineering Services Association.
I'm not convinced now, what's your knowledge on this?
I've always called them besa boxes and never thought why.
It was British Electrical Systems Association, which was merged into BEAMA many years ago.
@@jwflame well done, I confess I didn't know that 👍
Very similar scale and build to most modern 347/600V commercial panel boards here in Canada. Maybe not super space efficient but they can be rated for relatively high currents. It’s just a sized up version of what’s found in our homes here.
The amount of 'NEF' range and 'Stablok' Type 4's in the wild is crazy.
I was fitting federal equipment during my apprenticeship during the late 80s early 90s.
1:53 It looks like a bizarre hybrid of a North American and UK panel.
thanks for the new video. Some size brakers they are.
Hi John, hope you are well
Made me laugh "very disturbing arrangement"
Kind regards Warren
Isn't Federal electric a Turkish brand?
it is now, wasn't at the time these old circuit breakers were made.
Thanks John for your very substantial video
The substantialness and substantiality was substantially substantial.
@@johncoops6897 and robust
Hi John thanks for sharing your video with me and I would love to see a lot more of your videos as I can see to get different ideas
Every video starts with circuit breakers like electroBoom
ha ha ha I also Watch ElectroBOOM.
Lol
And i Love ElectroBOOM. Send J.W Round there and He will Put Him in his Place ha ha ha
John Ward,
You won’t see any flash out of the arc discharge unless you are close too, or exceed the rated breaking capacity or, service life of that protector; the vent is there to release, and guide the enormous volume of super heated air that would otherwise fracture the Bakelite case when the breaker is trying to clear a high energy fault, (ALL breakers have vents), please do some research before ragging on a design, you are better than that!
Further and no less importantly, it guides the ionised gasses away from the live buss where it would cause an uncontrolled arching fault, and operating leaver, where a persons finger might be.
I also take issue with your direct comparison with the new load centre, for all we know, this breaker and its chassis were capable of withstanding 15Ka for 0.5-1.0 seconds, while the new board would likely faint at any fault above 6Ka for 0.1 seconds (impossible to know without the rating label, and being thermal only, probably unlikely).
I have been building and repairing high power switchboards for decades longer than I care to remember, and the one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that small breakers CANNOT clear large faults, and you do not want to be the poor bastard that closes the breaker to find that out, that is why toy boards like that new load centre shown, would HAVE to be backed up by a set of 200Amp BS or 250Amp DIN HRC fuses if the prospective fault current is greater than 3Ka. Don’t take my word for it, check the manufacturers information under backup protection.
RS screwdriver. Now very old.
Any electric maker: New circuit breaker released
John Ward: Let's see what's inside
Made in the UK?
I think so 🇬🇧
No, made in Turkey.
1. Organize Sanayi Bölgesi/Arifiye/Sakarya, Turkey
Look like a copy of the older style, 1960s?, of American breaker
Maybe 1960s
@@suckdiesel7065 He found something more dangerous than a Federal Pacific breaker: a foreign knockoff of one!
5Rounds Rapid Federal claim to have been in business since 1990, with their first exports in 1994. Their website makes no reference to any previous manufacturer of that name.
The say the name "Federal" is used because it is the same in any language.
The example shown is therefore unlikely to be one of theirs due to its age. More like an old Heinemann which also seemed to suffer from lack of any magnetic overload protection. Probably typical of that type whatever the maker.
bro, what's with the gamer chair? do you wear a 4 point gaming harness when using it?
They're the cheapest way to get a new chair with decent ergonomics. (A used chair from office surplus is cheaper often, but I'd imagine pickings are slim at this point.)