Assuming molded case because of price.
This is pretty open ended so did you get lost in the dizzying list of options or you just can’t “find” these? There is a good reason for it. These are always field/shop made. Local panel shops make them pretty cheaply.
First mistake: GE does not exist. They’re gone or any product labeled that soon will be. It is just a brand name now. GE Capital, the investment company, almost bankrupted themselves in derivatives. ABB bought the lot then immediately sold the power distribution portion to Hitachi to finance it. They also unloaded their own power distribution that was mostly the leftovers from Westinghouse. Any “GE” product that competes with ABB either is or will be discontinued. Plus GE Wavepros were horrendous. So I’d avoid “GE” breakers.
Second mistake. Be careful with terminology. UL does not make it easy and there is a complex set of rules in the background. Even if you have engineering support unless you go to switchgear breakers where you use a protection relay. “Adjustable trip” generally means a motor protection breaker where only the instantaneous trip can be adjusted, not the long term setting.
So here is the UL “gotcha”. UL requires molded case breakers meet the UL A, B, or C curves. The thermal curves are all identical and very wide ranges. The magnetic trips go up to A=5x, B=10x, C=20x. So simple math here if we want adjustable thermal range, it can’t have a 20x magnetic trip! So they are 6-10 for a reason. If you look at the trip curves it’s obvious you can have an “adjustable” breaker but the adjustment can be no more than a 2.5:1 range. So if you are disappointed with the extremely limited adjustment it’s not the manufacturers fault, it’s UL limitations.
Now as for trip unit types, the cost of the trip unit scales with size for thermal-magnetic and is relatively fixed cost for electronic. The magic number is 800 A. Below 800 A, the electronic trip unit is more expensive. So you can find mechanical ones up to 1600 A but they are rare and you can find 400 and 600 A frame electronics but they are rare because price dictates which way most customers go. This is less of a “hard” barrier. ABB SACE XT and Eaton XT breakers go down to 400 A frames as electronic trip units but the breaker cost is quite high.
If you want protection relays at that point you can buy any breaker that supports shunt tripping or even a switch only version and use external CTs and a protection relay such as an SEL 751. This gives you infinite adjustment and programming but at a high price This used to be how things were always done at 400-600 A and above. Molded case breakers and integral trip units have slowly grown ever larger.
At this point break out the catalog. Since you know what is behind the scenes breakers are almost interchangeable. Using Benshaw as an example, because the catalog is much easier to browse:
See page 18 for the rotary handles or the next page for cable operators. Then you just need to buy a box from say Saginaw and you are good to go.
www.saginawcontrol.com
There are 3 construction options. The easiest (least tricky to build) is buy a cable operator. It’s expensive but the breaker can go anywhere and you have a nice highly reliable handle mechanism without the hassle of a through-door rod. Enclosure can be purchased with premade slot and holes for the handle. But it’s not cheap.
Second option is buy a swing out subpanel, Mount breaker to the back of it or with standoffs so the handle just pokes through. This requires breaking the NEMA 4X seal to operate the breaker.
Third option is a rotary through door handle. Most technically challenging to build it properly but it’s the cheapest so you see a lot of these.
Saginaw supplies boxes for all 3. If you use a local panel shop often they will just fabricate the box too (profit on box labor).
The above web sites give you LIST prices. Call or get in touch with local vendors for actual prices.
