Rotary switch including spring biased knife blade contacts

Abstract

A rotor assembly arranged between line and load contacts of a current interrupting device for interrupting circuit current between the line and the load contacts, the rotor assembly comprising an elongated rotor shaft for mounting in a base of the current interrupting device; a contact assembly having a pair of channeled and bowed conductive blades each having free ends at opposite edges for engaging a correspondingly positioned line contact and a correspondingly positioned load contact, each of the conductive blades further having a flat indentation for receiving a spring; the contact assembly further including a pair of springs having a bowed configuration and a flat portion at each end and which are assembled with the flat indentation of each one of the pair of conductive blades to resiliently bias the conductive blades toward one another, where the springs further including a raised portion having an aperture and each pair of conductive blades extend through the aperture in the elongated rotor shaft and each pair of springs resiliently bias the conductive blades toward one another within the shaft aperture.