NEMA Ratings ‘The National Electric Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) ‘maintain guidelines for contactors. The NEMA standards for vontactors differ from the uf the TEC and its impar= tant to understand these differences. ‘A philosophy of the NEMA standards is to provide clectrical interchangeability among manufacturers for a ‘given NEMA size. Because the customer often orders a ‘contactor by the current, motor horsepower, and voltage ratings, and may not know the application or duty cycle planned for the load, the NEMA contactor is designed by ‘convention with sufficient reserve capacity to assure per formance over a broad band of applications. “The continuous cument rating and horsepower at the rated voltages categorize NEMA size ratings. NEMA con- tactor size guides for AC and DC contactors are shown in Figure 6.21. Because copper contacts are used on some ‘contactors, the curent rating for each size isan 8-hour open rating the contactor must be opsrated at least once very 8 hours to prevent copper oxide from forming on the tips and causing excessive contact heating. For contactors with silver to silveralloy contacts, the 8-hour rating is equivalent toa continuous rating. The NEMA current rating is foreach main contact individually and not the contactor as a whole i ui “aw [ome "| [Soe | “Ss i w]e 1 | 3 o | 2 | 0 ET 3100 2 «| 0 3 | =| 300 «| 185 | coo [270 a) | 0 | 80 e_| | m0 Figure 6-21 NEMA contactor size guide. Pros costes Serene. wi Somers cm ‘As an example, a Size 00 three-pole AC contactor rated ‘at 9 A can be used for switching three separate 9-A loads - Additional ratings for total horsepower are also listed. When selecting always ensure thatthe contactor ratings exceed the load to be controled. NEMA contactor ‘izes are normally available ina variety of coil voltages. ‘As the NEMA size number classification increases, so does the current capacity and physical size of the contactor. Larger contacts are needed to carry and break the higher currents, and heavier mechanisms are required to open and close the contacts.