Are Reconditioned Circuit Breakers Any Good?

The word "reconditioned" covers everything from a full strip-down with new contacts and an injection test to a wipe with a rag and a new label. Buyers know this, which is why the question gets asked. The answer is that a properly reconditioned breaker meets the duty its switchboard was designed around, and a badly reconditioned one is a fault waiting for load. The difference is entirely in what was done and what was recorded.

What "reconditioned" should mean

• Full strip-down, not a surface clean. Arc chutes off, mechanism out, contacts exposed.
• Every wearing component measured against the manufacturer's limit and replaced where it fails: main and arcing contacts, contact springs, arc chute plates, latches, pivots, coils, the charging motor.
• Mechanism degreased and re-lubricated with the specified grade. This one item is the difference between a breaker that closes cleanly for fifteen years and one that seizes in five.
• Trip unit tested by secondary injection across every element against the published curve — and replaced if out of tolerance.
• Contact resistance and insulation resistance measured and recorded per pole.
• Operated through its full sequence electrically and mechanically, including anti-pumping, undervoltage and auxiliaries.

In the US the PEARL reconditioning standard formalises this; in the UK there is no equivalent badge, so the supplier's own test record has to do the work.

The evidence you should be given

A test certificate against the breaker's serial number, showing the trip unit settings during test, pick-up and trip time for each protection element, contact resistance per pole, insulation resistance, and the instrument used. A parts list saying what was replaced and where the parts came from — OEM, donor stock or re-manufactured. Photographs of the strip-down. And a warranty with a term on it. A reconditioned breaker sold without these is a used breaker with a price premium.

Three questions to ask

1. "Can I see the injection test results?" Not "was it tested" — the numbers. If they aren't offered, the test wasn't done or wasn't recorded, and either way you can't prove the protection works.
2. "What was replaced?" A reconditioned ACB with no parts replaced has been cleaned. That can be legitimate for a low-hours unit, but the contact measurements should be on the certificate to show why.
3. "What is the warranty, and who honours it?" Twelve months is the norm for a genuine rebuild. A thirty-day warranty is a returns policy.

When reconditioned beats new

Obsolete ranges are the obvious case: a reconditioned Masterpact M, first-generation Emax or Moeller IZM fits the cell the new range won't, and avoids a board project. Lead time is the other: a reconditioned unit from stock is on site in days when the OEM quotes weeks. And for a fleet — a data hall, a wind farm, a hospital estate — a pool of reconditioned exchange units on the shelf is what turns a breaker failure from an outage into a swap.

We recondition the customer's own breaker and return it with the certificate described above; our sister company Replacement Circuit Breakers holds tested units for sale. Either way, the test record comes with the breaker. Refurbishment, in detail.