Title: Circuit breaker

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Abstract: A circuit breaker has a contact member with a pair of arms which extend from the member in spaced side-by-side relation. The contact member also has a thermostatic portion which moves in response to an increase in temperature to move the distal ends of the arms away from each other. A latching plate has a pair of spaced latch surfaces engaged with the distal ends of the respective contact member arms for manually moving the contact member into closed circuit position. The latch surfaces permit the distal arm ends to slide from the latch surfaces as the arms move apart when the thermostatic portion is heated to a selected temperature in response to the occurrence of an overload current in the breaker circuit, thereby to allow the contact member to move automatically to an open circuit position under a spring bias. One latch surface has a shallow groove retarding sliding movement of an arm end thereon so that, when the thermostatic portion of the contact member is heated, the distal end of the other arm preferentially slides on the other latch surface, this preferential sliding permitting the circuit breaker to open a circuit at a more precisely predetermined overload current level.


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