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Blog posts of '2019' 'May'

Old FPE and Westinghouse Parts Compatibility

One of the more interesting aspects of our market is the history of the equipment and how it has changed over the years. While most of those changes were technological, some revolved around the people behind the scenes. One in particular that comes to mind, was a group of design engineers that had left the Westinghouse Corporation and went to Federal Pacific Equipment. While the story has certainly has been passed from mouth to mouth over the years, it does have some evidence to back it up. As told to me, it goes like this:

 

Back in the era of the Westinghouse DB 25 single position circuit breaker, a group of design engineers left the old bar W and went over to FPE. With their designs fresh in their heads, they used much of it to design the old FPE DMB circuit breaker product line. The similarities between the two are obvious. Westinghouse manufactured the DB 25 and the DB 50, etc. FPE’s new product line was called the DMB 25 and the DMB 50, etc. Both of these manufacturers used similar technology and materials for their parts, for example, pole base insulators and arc chutes but the similarities continued to the point that some of the parts are physically interchangeable! In particular, parts like secondary disconnects, control relays, shunt trips and a few others.

 

 

                               

    

    Westinghouse vs. FPE Shunt Trip                                 Westinghouse vs. FPE Secondary

 

               If you happen to have this FPE switchgear in your facility and you are having a difficult time locating the parts to maintain it, give us a call at 800-647-0815 or send us an email to info@npeinc.com  and we will show you parts that are much more common to the market (and less expensive) and how they can be used to keep your equipment up and running for many more years of reliable service.

 

As we say at NPE- that’s what we’re here for!