Control Panel Breaker Failure

The 30 AMP 240v 2 Pole breaker in my control panel keeps failing. Only one of the poles burns out, but it doesn't flip the breaker. The pole that burns out is the one that goes directly to the 5500w heating element (through a contractor), not the one that runs through the board and then to the element (through a contractor). What would cause this side specifically to fail and to not trip the breaker. It doesn't happen every brew session, just about every 3-4 sessions. I am not sure what would be the cause. I do intend to pull all of the wiring from the board and rewire it and see if that fixes the problem, but I was wondering if anyone else had this problem or at least knew what was causing the problem.

Is it the breaker itself that is failed, or is it a wiring issue? "Burning out" sounds like the wiring might be too light duty, which is a fire hazard, among other things.

The breaker itself. I did continuity testing and it is the breaker. When replaced everything works well for a couple of sessions and then fails again. I am using 10 gauge THHN wire for all of the high amperage areas and 14 gauge for the lower amperage areas.

Yuri_Rage said:

Is it the breaker itself that is failed, or is it a wiring issue? "Burning out" sounds like the wiring might be too light duty, which is a fire hazard, among other things.

Click to expand...

Here's another possibility, if there is evidence of arcing (poor connection between the breaker and panel):

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCqGjqoc_Ts[/ame]

Yuri_Rage said:

Here's another possibility, if there is evidence of arcing (poor connection between the breaker and panel):

Click to expand...

The way I have it connected is it is connected to a din rain and then it has wires that run into the top and the bottom and I verified connection. I do not think that it is arching, but I will check for the arching damage when I get back home just to double check.

My though is for some reason there is a huge surge being pulled through one of the poles of the breaker and it is higher than the breaker can handle and instead of flipping it is burning out the fuse inside the breaker. Is this possible and if so what are typical causes of such high surges?

The fact that you don't know how to spell contactor and the fact that apparently only one side of the heater goes through the breaker suggests that you know little or nothing about wiring/circuitry. I would therefore strongly suggest that you consult someone who does know about these things. There is no mechanism in the normal application of a two pole breaker that would cause one side to burn without tripping that I can think of that would cause the breaker to burn but not trip. OTOH a highly asymetrical load would cause one side to trip but not the other.

AJ, I think both legs run through the breaker, though the OP is admittedly a bit hard to decipher. I can't think of anything, either. Even a massively ugly wiring issue should trip the breaker, assuming the wire is capable of carrying enough current to do so. However, all signs point to just that - bad wiring/improper circuitry.

Both legs run through the breaker, then are split to 2 bus rails. 1 rail then provides power directly to the contactor, the other runs through an ssr relay first then to the contactor. The leg that runs to the ssr relay doesn't fail, it is the leg that runs to directly to the contactor.

I didn't have the wiring in front of me with my first post and I working from a poor memory.