kwired
Electron manager
- Location
- NE Nebraska
- Occupation
- EC
I have ordered many Square D panels and had to field assemble them in the past. Both I-line as well as smaller bolt-on's, like NQ or NF series. The bus assembly is not field assembled, but I have several times had to remove main lugs and install a main breaker kit or even a sub feed lug kit. The NQ and NF usually have neutral assembly attached to same assembly as the main bus, but I-line usually they send a separate neutral assembly that mounts to the cabinet separately.I could understand why the 600v breakers were supplied. The actual interunit pricing is probably the same as for a lower voltage breaker so cost wise it made no difference to the pnlbd/swbd plant. I find it to be very strange that the item was basically sent to yo is a do it yourself kit though.
And I question the kaic rating based upon a series rating and a do it yourself assembly?
And the type 'LA' originated from Westinghouse as a basic 400a frame thermal magnetic breaker. The they were able to engineer that frame into a 600a frame. As such LA3400 and LA3600 which are now provided by Eaton electrical (C-H) which are 600v.
Most industrial/commercial breakers are 600v. It's when you get into the smaller bolt-ons and the in between sizes where they end up rated 240, 277/480, 480v which may be different from one manufacturer to another.
I think you can probably order most of those panels factory assembled, not sure if they would cost more, but AFAIK you may be waiting longer for them than if they just send you components out of stock. My distributor uses software from Square D to enter necessary data and the computer "builds" the material list for the panel from the specs entered, and they either pull from stock, order it, or a little of both.
Series rating? I did not select the breakers, I told them what available current was, their program selected the breaker types AFAIK. I kind of did some double checking from the generated materials list and it appeared the branch breakers were rated for series with the main we had, but the panel with no single main did use higher AIC rated breakers as each one was a main - but similar available current in that install also.