Cutler Hammer Arc Fault

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kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Are you serious? RF is getting into AFCI's and tripping them? Have to let one of my friends know, he is a ham and building a new house... 73 de W4KAV
There isn't anything that can't fool them into tripping. Even ugly homeowners has been know to cause false tripping:)
 

JFletcher

Senior Member
Location
Williamsburg, VA
There isn't anything that can't fool them into tripping. Even ugly homeowners has been know to cause false tripping:)


:D:D:D:D

Congratulations, sir. You have won the Internet. If ONN was more electrical oriented, that would make a great headline:

"Ugly Homeowners Source of Tripping AFCI Breakers"
 

Electric-Light

Senior Member
AFCI is on the look out for signature current pattern from arcing but this is one of those things computers still suck at.

If you feed the output of a current transformer monitoring a blender through an amplifier and play it on speaker, it will resemble what you hear from the motor.

When you have to deal with automated voice recognition operator on the phone the computer mishears you in ways people don't. The signal processor makes same kind of judgment errors and hears things as arc and make false judgment calls.
 

GoldDigger

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
AFCI is on the look out for signature current pattern from arcing but this is one of those things computers still suck at.

If you feed the output of a current transformer monitoring a blender through an amplifier and play it on speaker, it will resemble what you hear from the motor.

When you have to deal with automated voice recognition operator on the phone the computer mishears you in ways people don't. The signal processor makes same kind of judgment errors and hears things as arc and make false judgment calls.
An excellent and informative analogy.
It also explains why actual arc detection can be harder with lots of non arc "sounds" on the same circuit.
The only missing thing from the analogy is the current threshold.

mobile
 

mtfallsmikey

Senior Member
So far, the only two bands that seem to bother the AFCI's are 17 and 20 meters. There are probably thousands of full power (or better) stations using high gain antennas, and the problem still seems to be confined to the 17 and 20 meter bands.

Take a transceiver/linear there, hook up a vertical or low-height dipole and try it!

73 de W4KAV
 
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