The electric airbag

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The first circuit breaker was a complete success, as it could be screwed simply in the existing fuse base and thus no changes to the electrical installation were required.

Meanwhile, the BBC-subsidiary had more than 500 employees and added more products to its production in the next few years: first of all contactor relays, the first device of the later division of apparatus construction, and, in the mid 1930s, also explosion-proof devices.

BBC bought Kontakt AG in Frankfurt and merged it in 1930 with the Stotz-plant. Stotz-Kontakt was born and brought a new iron into the market, which switched off automatically when it overheated. After the death of Hugo Stotz in 1935, the next few years were characterised by the NS-Regime and the second world war. Afterwards, when the depot in Mannheim-Neckarau burnt down in 1939, it was closed, and a new start was a new factory in Heidelberg. There, in 1943, the assembly of circuit breakers, rotary and flip switches and sockets took place. Even the assembly of the equipment manufacturing shifted to Mannheim after the plant was destroyed in an air raid.

Changes through mechanisation

After the war, Stotz-Kontakt started to manufacture screw-in circuit breakers S 111 in 1948 and a new Stotz circuit breaker with a shorter switching time for a short-circuit current of 10 kA was presented in the Hannover fair in 1957. New locations for assembly and production were added in the 1960s and 1970s. Production changed during this time. Semi-automated production for part production and assembly was introduced in 1968 that was then replaced by highly mechanised production systems from 1985 onwards. The increasingly degree of automation – in 2008, the highly automated system M1, started operation in Heidelberg – enabled increasing production volumes.

After the DIN-rails entered the market in 1970, Stotz-Kontakt presented the first circuit breaker with a width of 17.55 mm and a height of 68 mm. With the S700, the first Stotz main circuit breaker was introduced in 1980. This selective main circuit breaker enabled the building of selectively cascaded protective systems only with circuit breakers. After ABB was established in 1988, the circuit breaker System pro M compact S200 was produced under the name of ABB Stotz-Kontakt.

Today, circuit breakers are mass produced. Therefore, BBC or ABB, kept investing in the production to increase productivity. Of course, in 2016, in the 125th year of its birth, the highly automated, flexible and interlinked assembly line, ML2, was produced in Heidelberg. Thus, it is not the first time that higher productivity was paramount. Now, ABB wants to realise Industry 4.0 in in-house production and wants to enable more flexibility to produce a larger variety.

This article was first published on maschinenmarkt.de

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The electric airbag

Changes through mechanisation