A family of vacuum circuit-breakers with worldwide applications using common components

The need of increasing the efficiency of production processes in order to be competitive on the world market is a must nowadays. Besides material and labour costs, the expenses due to logistic processes are considerable. The new vacuum circuit-breaker from ABB with magnetic drive technology and vacuum interrupters embedded in epoxy resin is an excellent example of how product development can match the factory needs on one side, to the customer requirements on the other side. A modular system is described with a family of actuators and interrupter units with the least number of different parts serving the complete range of short-circuit and dielectric ratings. Minor design modifications allow the application to special purpose breakers for synchronous or high speed switching duties.