Eaton Corporation

Westinghouse Electric Corporation

John Dennis Petrisko

Paul Anthony Colbaugh

Norman Davies

Robert E Wobrak

Allen G Filson

An electrical busway plug-in brick for mounting on a busway housing includes openings which allow access to bus bars running along the length of the housing. Barrier members are preferably positioned across the openings to restrict access of fingers or other similarly sized objects through the openings, while allowing electrical contacts to be made therethrough. The plug-in brick preferably includes a lockable cover which deters unauthorized access to the openings of the plug-in brick. The openings may extend unequal distances through the plug-in brick in order to provide increased creep and strike distance which prevents electrical arcing. The plug-in brick may be mounted on the busway housing by release pockets which prevent destruction of the plug-in brick upon a short circuit by allowing the plug-in brick to be detached from the housing.

Busway plug in brick and cover

A busway system having several parallel bus bars arranged in a housing with a plug-in opening in a front wall of the housing employs a cover assembly with a plug-in unit over the plug-in opening. The cover assembly has a brick mounted onto the front wall of the housing, and a shutter attached to the brick. The brick has a plurality of cavities each of which receive a stab of one of the bus bars, and has a guide opening along its bottom wall on opposed ends. The shutter extends across the front of the brick, is positionable over the several cavities of the brick, and has a configuration corresponding to the arrangement of the cavities. A cam-linkage assembly located on opposed sidewalls of the brick is spring biased and allows the shutter to be moved along tracks of the brick for opening and closing the cavities. The plug-in unit has guide probes which enter the guide openings along the bottom of the brick as the plug-in unit is being installed onto the busway system. The guide probes contact cams of the cam-linkage assemblies, causing the cams to rotate to move the links and, therefore, the shutter in an open positioning for the cavities. Removal of the plug-in unit from the busway system removes the guide probes from the guide openings of the brick, thereby allowing the springs to move the shutter to its previous positioning to close the cavities in the brick.

Cover assembly for a plug-in opening of a busway system

An enclosure structure for housing switchgear apparatus (such as circuit breakers) is fabricated from a pair of sheet metal panels that are held in precisely-spaced upstanding relationship by a plurality of metal cross-struts of U-shaped cross-section which mechanically interlock with apertured portions of the panels and are held in such position by triangular-shaped metal gussets which overlap and are bolted to adjacent portions of the cross-struts and panels. The cross-struts are provided with longitudinally protruding tangs at each end that are slip-fitted into and interlock with slot apertures in the panels. The width dimension of the finished enclosure structure is precisely controlled by positioning tabs on the ends of the cross-struts that are offset from the associated tangs and are drawn into abutting relationship with the inner surfaces of the respective panels when the structure is bolted together. Construction and assembly of the enclosure structure is accordingly achieved without the expensive tooling, jigs and welding operations heretofore required to manufacture such structures.

Growing community of inventors

West Mifflin, PA, United States of America

John Dennis Petrisko