Production Flexibility at S&C Brings a Speedy End to a Plant Outage.

A company in the eastern United States that shreds used autos experienced a cable fault at their location. The upstream protection failed to interrupt the fault, and a wall-mounted S&C Mini-Rupter® Switch was damaged beyond repair. The entire plant was shut down.

The damaged switch was old and obsolete, and a new model would have to be reviewed by the customer before it could be built. In addition, the typical lead time for a wall-mounted switch is 12 weeks. An outage this long would prove extremely costly.

But S&C responded immediately to shrink the plant outage to the bare minimum. Drawings were sent out for the customer to look at, and with the help of S&C specialists, the appropriate switch was chosen. The Metal-Enclosed Gear Products Division at S&C rallied to the emergency, and the replacement wall-mounted Mini-Rupter Switch was built and shipped in just four days. The field crew was able to install and test cable and circuits over the weekend, and the shredding operations were up and running by Monday morning.

Wall-mounted Mini-Rupter switches are available in 14.4 kV, 600 ampere ratings. These three-pole, group-operated interrupter switches are mounted in compact 11-gauge steel enclosures. The enclosures are indoor style and feature drip-proof construction.