Design and Development of Automatic Testing Setups for Circuit Breaker

Abstract

The circuit breaker like MCCBs and ACBs are used to protect the electrical circuit and systems against deviation from standard working conditions. A faulty circuit breaker will cause great damage and impose penalty on their manufacturer. The automation has become a necessity in production and testing. Using automa- tion higher accuracy and better production rate can be achieved with better quality. In a testing and measuring process to remove human error and to process with less skilled human resources, the automation is prefered. In this dissertation work it is aimed to design and develop an automatic test setup for test the MCCB with accessories and the automatic test setup to measure closing force and trip force of ACB. These systems consist of a mechanical xture, electrical and pneumatic actuators, sensors, control system and computer software. The automatic setup to test the functionality of accessories (UV, SHUNT and AUX- TAC) used with MCCB and an automatic setup to check the closing force and trip force for air circuit breaker has been designed, analyzed, fabricated and tested to validate functionality of test setup and poka-yoke has been implemented for error proo ng, which eliminates the operator's mistakes. Catching the defects in early stage reduced the rework and saved 63 man hours per month. The DAQ card and Programming Logic Control is used to actuate the pneumatic actuators and control the motion of same using PLC and LabVIEW programming and the user interface screen is also developed using LabVIEW software.