120V Circuit Breaker Question

[IPA-Hole]

I'm building a 120v control panel and I want to put a 120v 15a single pole din mount circuit breaker in it - where can I purchase the circuit breaker? All I can find are 15a 240v which I'm sure I could use but won't the amp rating change at 120v???

 

[SobchakSecurity]

Nope, 15 amps is 15 amps. As long as we're still talking about a single pole breaker, the 240 volts is just the maximum rated voltage. The wire you are using is probably says 600v on it, but if it's #12 copper, it's 15 amp wire, regardless of voltage.
-Dude

 

[The10mmKid]

I dislike pointing people to Grainger due to their prices, but they are usually local and nationwide.
http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg/search.shtml?searchQuery=5mlc5&op=search&Ntt=5mlc5&N=0&GlobalSearch=true&sst=subset

Sobchak, you're nearly correct.
#12 copper is good for 20A

'da Kid

 

[IPA-Hole]

Ahhhh, very cool! Thanks for the info guys!!!

 

[SobchakSecurity]

You're absolutely right, Kid, small beer related brain fart there.
Not sure what the breaker you want is protecting, but the one listed in that link is a DC voltage breaker, not AC...
-Dude

 

[P-J]

SUPPLEMENTARY PROTECTOR 1 POLE 15A B CURVE

It's what you need and is a lot cheaper than the Grainger reference.

 

[IPA-Hole]

Hey Thanks P-J and many thanks for the countless schematics that you have provided here on HBT - the info is priceless.....

 

[The10mmKid]

You're absolutely right, Kid, small beer related brain fart there.
Not sure what the breaker you want is protecting, but the one listed in that link is a DC voltage breaker, not AC...
-Dude

Thanks Dude
Yea, I saw that DC rating too.
If you look under the 'additional info' tab, you'll find it is a UL1077 rated breaker with all it's AC ratings.

DC is a very hard voltage to interrupt. Grainger must be listing it as it's best attribute. We use these a lot for 24VDC power supply circuits.

When a breaker 'trips' or opens under load, there will be an arc of voltage trying to get across the gap that just opened. It can be quite dramatic at high loads and voltage. AC voltage has the benefit of passing back though 0-volts every 1/30 of a second which helps. We don't have that benefit with DC

'da Kid