(clattering)
(electric wave pulse)
- In a previous video presentation of the what
I like to call, honey I shrunk the device (chuckles),
we looked at how all of this technology here
now appears in a single module AFDD RCBO
If you haven't already watched that video click
the arrow above our head and go back and revisit that video.
What we looking at today, John?
- I think we're gonna take one of these apart.
Sorry, we're gonna, sorry, sorry, no.
(John chuckles)
Wait, this is a video Joe. - Yeah.
- We're gonna take apart an AFDD?
- For sure, we're gonna drill it open,
and we're gonna have a look at what's going on inside here.
Do you remember when we looked at
the surge protection device?
And we burst - Oh yeah.
- it out open, we had a look at what was going on
on the inside.
We learned so much from ourselves, didn't we?
Stuff we weren't aware of. - We did.
- So, I think we've got to open this up
and see what's going on inside so we can start
to understand how it's working.
To prove point, pick up that double module
AFDD there. - Yep.
- Now, hold that one.
- Yours seems a little lighter.
- Yeah, didn't it just, yeah?
- And that makes me really curious.
I'm as curious to see what's not in here as much
as I am what is in here.
- Oh yeah, good thinking John.
- Because I can't imagine they've managed to get in here
all the bits and bobs you need for an MCB.
- Yeah.
- An RCD and then AFDD.
- So, you think things might be missing.
- I can't imagine that there's a bimetallic strip in here,
I can't imagine electromagnetic coil in here,
that you've got the old toroidal current transformer
for monitoring the the RCD protection, I just can't see it.
So, I think when we open this up,
we're just going to see a big flat PCB with a little lever
that just clicks that off when it's time
to switch off. - Okay.
- I can't understand how they manage to get all that
in there, I wanna know what's going on inside.
- I was always a gentleman, very generous guy.
I'll throw you a bone.
So, once we've got this open
I'll let you explain that since you solved the device.
(John laughing)
- That's great and to be honest if you want to come
and see amazing technology like this then please check
the description below because you'll find a link
to our Effix live feed events.
And I recommend for me to get this in pieces
and it survives the ordeal, we should take that
to our live feed event so people can actually
have a look at it without taking it upon themselves.
- Okay, I think we've teased it for long enough.
Joe's gonna explain what's going
on (chuckles) inside miniature AFDD.
- Joe is gonna grab his drill and open it up for starters
and then we'll see.
- [Gary] So, in front of me I've got
a crabtree star breaker designed single module AFDD RCBO
in one unit.
How many of you out there have actually fitted them?
Joe, would you reckon?
- [Joe] I don't think there's very many (laughs).
I think you're in the minority.
- [Gary] So, if not many people have fitted them,
how many people do you think have taken one apart?
- [Joe] Even less.
- [Gary] Okay, so, let's join the club maybe
of not having fitted one recently but certainly let's join
the club of maybe not many and let's see if we can take
the side off this crabtree device.
Tough job. - All right, Gary.
Well, you have to bear with me
'cause I've just come fresh from my job as a mime artist.
So, we're just gonna have to bear with me while
we try and drill through this.
So, we've got these rivets on here and hopefully
we're gonna be able to drill those out
and then take the side off this.
So, this could be quite exciting.
Let's see what we can find inside here.
So, I'm gonna try and use my arm like a drill press
and we'll see how we get on.
(drill machine blaring)
Okay, so, we've taken the head off that.
Now, I think at this point we'll just pause and just see
if we can punch that through, if this is going to work.
Okay, so, we'll just see if we can tap this rivet through.
(hammering)
Yeah, that's on its way out.
So, that's good and actually hopefully, then if we just get
a pair pliers on the other side of that we'll be able
to whip that out, okay?
So, I've got my side cutters here and I reckon
I'll be able to, yeah, remove this (mumbles).
So, that's removed, okay.
So, we'll let drill the rest of these out.
Knock those rivets out and then we'll see
what's on the inside.
(drill machine blaring)
Okay, right.
So, that's all drilled.
Give him a little tap.
(hammering)
One of them is right.
(hammering)
One of them is right.
Not wanna slip so, one is sliding already (laughs).
All right, let's take that out of that.
Well, have a look, that one is gonna need
a little bit more of a boche.
So, we've got that one out
and then we've got some slightly different designs
of rivets there.
So, they might need just a little bit more
of a thwack there.
So, we'll see if we can just get that out.
(hammering)
Just need a bit more...
(hammering)
A bit more of depth from those ones.
Now we go, that's it.
Now, look at that.
There's another one and that is another one
that I don't know.
Okay, we've - Okay.
done this right, so, we've got the rivets out.
So, personally I think that's the hard part
'cause looking at this Gary you can see we've just got
these sort of plastic clips on the front.
We'll need to get that little metal sort of joining part
of there as well and then we can have a look
at what's actually on the inside.
- [Gary] Okay then Joe, so, on closer inspection
we think we've got two straps that we're gonna have
to remove and that top section there.
So, maybe we've done the easy part,
we'll find out in a moment, won't we?
- [Joe] We'll give it a go soon
and let's see what we can find here.
So, I reckon if I can just get under there.
There's that. - Well, easy.
- [Joe] Here we go.
Well, it takes years of skill Gary
to be able to do this kind of thing, manual dexterity,
you know, and then we're gonna have a look at the top side
and see if we can get this open.
- [Gary] Pride after a fall, is it?
- [Joe] Yeah, I was just thinking I might (laughs)
I might regret saying that now and that's not so good.
( Joe muttering gibberish)
And I come on that side.
Okay, all right, something's happening.
Okay.
- [Gary] Do we need the plastic to catch up the--?
- [Joe] There's a secret line here.
- [Gary] (mumbles) Maybe with a better tool.
- [Joe] What did it do?
Let's see.
So, I need to slide off the side a little bit
(clattering sound drowns out Joe's words)
When I look at this, we've come all this way.
I need to be foiled by the catch on the back
- [Gary] Which ironically pop off all the time
when you don't want them to.
- [Joe] Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
I see yeah.
Okay, so, this has come off a little bit less skillfully.
I think it's fair to say that we're done
(laughs) we'll be...
- [Gary] Well, we'll leave the first bit in
about your dexterity and---
- [Joe] Yeah, I don't think we'll be re-fitting that
and of course what's happened
is the top snapped back together and always the way
isn't it? - Yes.
- [Joe] Always the way, there we go.
All right, so, its actually sort of two sided, I think.
So, let's have a look at, first time I've ever seen inside
an AFDD guys.
- [Gary] You don't open one regularly?
- [Joe] No, this is not a regular thing for me.
- [Gary] Okay.
- [Joe] Exciting times, we'll do the big reveal.
Wow. - Wow.
There's not as much in there as you think, is there?
- [Joe] No, that's quite interesting.
So, I can see a couple of things in there
I vaguely recognize.
Now, that is interesting actually 'cause there's stuff in
there that I was not expecting to see actually
and it is in there.
So, that is deeply interesting.
Yeah, I think the other side needs to come off as well.
Hopefully we can get the other side off without
the whole thing falling apart.
So, turn that over.
Okay, without it falling apart, it's already falling apart.
(laughs) Okay, so, maybe we'll analyze this side first
and then we'll have a look at the other side in a moment.
- [Gary] So, we've opened up one side of the AFDD Joe
and I think this is a game of two halves just looking at
this side I'm not familiar with much
that's going on there. (Joe laughing)
However, without a sneaky look at the other side
and we went, "Aah."
- [Joe] Well it's interesting 'cause when we started talking
about making this video, we sort of said,
"Well, what is it gonna be to look at inside here?
"What's gonna be going on?"
But actually, now we have had a little sort of sneaky peak
there is an awful lot to see and we also did when we said,
"Well, we'll mostly be talking about what's not in there,"
but it's quite interesting the (chuckles) things
that are in here, is it?
There's an awful lot going on.
So, first of all you can see here,
this is the crabtree star breaker.
So, we've got the busbar connection down here,
the pin that just pushes into the busbar there
with the screwless contact which we'll have within us,
fantastic. - We did Joe.
- [Joe] Fantastic product.
So, you can see there that you've got
your line connection goes on to this blue conductor
which is not the neutral, that's the line conductor
that confuses just to start with and then
if you just look very carefully down inside there
you can see it passes through
a little toroidal current transformer effectively,
which you're familiar with from your classic RCD,
RCBO type technology.
We've then got, this side we've got the rather lovely PCB.
Gary's gonna explain all about that later.
Down on there-- - It's green.
It's green, just
down there it's green, okay? (Joe laughing)
- [Joe] So, it does add some fairly beefy Components
on there some rather interesting stuff.
So, we might have a look at that later but again,
what's coming out of here and this is where
we might get easily confused.
You can see there's these two little connections that go on
to this coil here, now again, instantly your brain is going,
"Ah, now, inside an MCB Gary, what do we normally find
"in there that acts as the coil?"
- [Gary] Yeah, this should be the part that would be
for when we've got excess current,
creates a massive magnetic field and causes the mechanism
to trip but this is a 40 amp device and just even looking at
the thickness of those windings it doesn't suggest to me
that, that is doing that job for this device.
- [Joe] Absolutely not, the conductor is far too thin.
If fault current was to flow through there--
- [Gary] Hundreds or thousands of amperes.
- [Joe] That would just melt.
That would just be destroyed.
- [Gary] Well, it worked then,
it's definitely working. (Joe laughing)
- [Joe] However, It's performing, not the same function,
but a similar function, obviously, it's a solenoid
that gets triggered by the PCB.
So, when this is detecting the arc fault current
that is flowing when it's detecting the arc in the circuit
this is going to trigger this which pulls the plunger up
and actually disconnects the supply going out of here.
Now, there is one quite interesting little thing here Gary
that we're sort of intrigued by.
We're not gonna move this around too much
because we don't want all these things
to come pinging out whenever we (laughs) switch this on
but just down here underneath the operating switch down here
is the LED panel that glows it's also the test button
and if you look very, very carefully there's a tiny,
tiny little LED there mounted on a PCB
and it's actually mounted.
It's using the reflective element of this to show
when the LED is on.
So, it's actually pointing downwards the LED itself
to start with but when it turns on
it will obviously reflect off this phase here
and then you'll be able to see the lamp there.
So, I'm wondering if that carries on
to the other side for it to get the different colors
or what's going on there.
So, it'd be interesting just to confirm that
when we flip it over and have a look at the other side.
- [Gary] That's interesting Joe, but actually we'd like
to look at things that are familiar to us.
And I think when we flip this round,
we can do that deep sigh of relief
when we can actually start recognizing components
within the AFDD.
- [Joe] Absolutely, so, we're gonna just stick the lid back
on this side 'cause we don't want all the little things
just to fall out of here.
We'll turn it over and we'll have a look at what's going on
with the other side of this.
So, I'll just put this back together again.
Just clip that on there.
Unfortunately we've managed to burst off one of the clips,
so, I don't think it's ever going to get re-installed now,
is it Gary?
Now, we've drilled the rivets out.
I don't think we could go and fit this in a propped in,
in good conscience.
So, we've flipped it over now and it's quite clever
because this is clearly the central mounting chassis to this
and then you've got the two leads that come on
from either side.
Again, a very clever design, you can imagine
the engineers sitting around scratching
their heads wondering how they're gonna fit
all this into--
- [Gary] One device.
- [Joe] One MCB size device.
So, let's get this side off then.
- [Gary] Oh yeah, then we get the tension and all--
- [Joe] Yeah, that's definitely what I'm doing here.
Just accidentally re-clipped this on.
Its definitely caught something.
- [Gary] Just quoting the earlier part of the video
with your great dexterity and all the rest of it
(Joe laughing) Is just, carry on of course
Yeah, put it back like before.
All right, yeah.
(screwdriver clinking)
(Gary sighing)
- [Joe] (laughs) It's like a new switching mechanism of,
without by accident.
So, we'll see if we can follow that back in, there we go.
It's good.
Now, that looks a little bit more familiar, doesn't it Gary?
- [Gary] Mm-hm. - Yeah,
we can see a lot more going on in there.
So, pointing out some of the things we can see
that are quite familiar to us.
- [Gary] We can now clearly see the coil
that we didn't get mistaken for on the other side here
and see the size of that.
So, obviously when that's carrying hundreds or thousands
of amps creates a massive magnetic field
causes the operation of the device with our arc chutes
and one thing we didn't think we'd find in here,
we thought they'd do it in some clever way,
we've still got the bimetal strip.
So, yeah - I'm staggered by that,
I thought it would just be a PCB and if that's monitoring
the arc fault current I thought surely I'd use that
to monitor the fault current, the normal current flow,
all that sort of stuff but actually all that original kind
of old tech is still in place which is somehow reassuring,
isn't it?
'Cause sometimes people, sort of,
they'll say something like, "Oh, I don't trust electronics
"at all."
You know, things break down, it goes wrong
but actually look at that we've got the old faithful bits
of kit in there that we know and rely on
to protect our installations.
- [Gary] And it's amazing
how much technology actually crammed into it,
isn't it? - Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, and again, you can see just a tiny detail down
here mounted onto this little PCB,
there's a little button down there so that when you push
the test button here, click, you can see that
it makes contact with that and we'll operate
the RCD element of it.
- So, let's go back to the table
and summarize what we did Joe.
That was actually a good fun Joe, wasn't it (chuckles)?
- It was, I really enjoyed doing that.
- That was really good, it was quite simplicity
to get a part but once you got it apart it wasn't simplicity
when you got inside it, was it?
- No, no and very interesting just the way
it's structured as well it got that kind
of central chassis running through the middle there
with a cover on one side and a cover on the other side.
You sort of almost got the classic protection on one side
and then the brand new shiny new protection
on the other side and I thought I was really cool.
- And when we opened it, obviously, opening the side
that was more technology based sort of gave us that moment,
"Oh, look what's missing though."
Once you turn it over in your,
"Ah, we're all in there again, - There it all is.
"our old favorites (Joe laughing)
"a coil and a bimetal strip."
- Yeah.
- So, well, it doesn't look like nothing's missing Joe.
So, I don't know how they got the white down,
slimmed it down so well but we've got all of the technology
of the double module at less white into a single module.
This is fantastic - Absolutely.
It is a phenomenal bit of engineering just in itself.
I mean, there's so much more going on inside there
that it isn't your typical protection device
and you can kind of start to understand how these
are gonna be so valuable for protecting people's properties.
- Yeah, and I always like to throw you a bone Joe,
so, of course I allowed you to open it up,
and I allowed you to explain to the audience
what was going on inside there.
Maybe there's another challenge in it for you,
maybe we need a Joe Robinson training style video
where we're perhaps whiteboard based
and you can be - Okay.
- the master of knowledge when you can explain to me
in simplistic terms so I can understand,
so, you can imagine how simple that is gonna be.
(Joe laughing)
You're gonna have to try and explain to me
what is actually going on with the technology
within the AFDD section of that device.
- Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, yeah.
- Is it a lot?
- Might need a little bit of time to research that
but yes, I think that's a great idea 'cause I do wanna know
a little bit more about just how this detects arcs,
how can it know that arc fault is happening?
So yeah, I think that's a good idea
we'll start looking into that.
- Cause we know the AC wave form, you've done many videos
on that and we know that, that wave form changes
when we dim a circuit but something must
be happening, obviously, for it to be seen by the AFDD.
- Yeah, very accurate.
- Very generous coming and going out of and doing that.
So, hopefully you've enjoyed that video presentation.
Hopefully you've enjoyed seeing inside one of these
and this is in a series of videos
on over current protection device that we've produced here
on Efixx, so, feel free to check out some of those
and hopefully we'll see some of these people down
at one of our live feeds.
- Absolutely, looking forward
to seeing you there. (clattering)
(electronic wave pulse)