SirDick Diodenob esquire
Member
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I have seen a lot of mcbs and rcd devices fail and also recalls by market leaders involving tens of thousands of units which they did a great job in keeping the lid on publicity . RCDs have electronics inside and some of the designs are no more reliable than you would find in your washing machine or fridge . A 16 amp mcb will trip before a 13amp fuse operates except on a full on short circuit over a thousand amps . The 13amp domestic fuse has a fusing factor of approx 1.6 so should not operate until it sees approx 20 amps (there are a lot of poor fuses and plugs around so this figure is not always what happens in practice) . Industrial fuses have a factor of 1.45 in a decent fuse holder ( which many of them are not ) . The fuse and mcb makers waged a propaganda war against each other until the mid 1990s when some of the big ones merged or were taken over so you dont see as much of the pros and cons in the technical press anymore but in countries like Germany and Netherlands and many others the fuse is still first choice in industrial and utility applications in preference to mcbs and mccbs for very good technical and economic reasons .
