Quote:
Originally Posted by adciv
No, I assume the intent of the breaker is to limit the temperature of the wiring. Your fallacy is in assuming cooling down the breaker resets the system. A breaker, including this one, is not intended to only protect against high current short duration short circuits but also longer duration overloads. This is why the breaker will trip after an overload which occurs for 30 seconds. Depending on the overload of some breakers, it can require one hour to trip. It depends on the amount of overload.
By cooling the breaker, you are trying to bypass the safety mechanism it represents which includes long duration overloads such as you are apparently inducing in your design. How long does it for the breaker to trip when you practice?
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A circuit breaker is a circuit protection device so its purpose it to protect the circuit, ie the wiring. So yes it is to prevent the wiring from getting hot enough to cause the insulation to start to flow, melt, or catch on fire.
So I feel that cooling the breaker is a bad idea because you are "resetting it" to ambient temps but not doing the same for the wiring which it is supposed to protect.