How an electric differential machine works

2025 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2025-01-24 13:10

More recently, fuses served as the main means of protecting electrical circuits from overload and short circuit. Technological progress has not bypassed such, at first glance, a simple area as disconnecting emergency devices.

The electric differential machine helps not only when it is necessary to protect the wiring from overheating, it can in some cases save human lives. At the same time, not only short circuits are dangerous, but also breaks in conductors, which can freely touch various objects and cause electric shock.

Automatic electric is designed to instantly de-energize the entire electrical circuit or that branch in which a critical situation has arisen. In order for it to perform this task, a simple processing of information is necessary. The word "differential" in the context of the name of the protective device indicates that it compares the values of forward and reverse currents in a closed electrical network. Opening of contacts occurs when their values cease tomatch.

In industrial enterprises, the operating voltage of 380 V is usually used, and a three-phase electric automatic machine is installed on switchboards, which reacts to emergency-dangerous discrepancies in currents at the input and output of the circuit in each of the phase loads.

To illustrate the operation of this protective device, one can imagine a situation in which a worker inadvertently touched an uninsulated part of a current-carrying element. The life-threatening current is approximately 20 mA. The subject is usually unable to let go of the conductor, causing death on contact lasting a few seconds.

Automatic electric differential, configured to operate at a current leakage of 10mA, will not allow damaging voltage to affect the body for a long time. A person will experience discomfort, but after the circuit is instantly de-energized, his life will be safe, a spasm of the heart muscle will not occur. In this case, in any other case, the machine will pass through its contact groups the current for which it is designed.

The same situation will occur in the event of a break, when the wire touches any grounding element.

Short-circuit protection is activated instantly when the allowable current is exceeded. The safety of the wiring is also provided in the event of a relatively minor, but prolonged passage of excessive load through it. SoThus, the electric machine protects the insulation from drying out, and the contact groups from premature burnout.

Such protective equipment is used not only in production workshops, it is widely used in residential premises (apartments, houses). The single-phase electric machine is increasingly actively replacing traffic jams, the inconvenience of which is the need to constantly have fuse-links on hand. It's no secret that it has long been common practice to replace them with "bugs", which often leads to fires. After eliminating the cause of the short circuit, the machine just needs to be turned on.