Nope, he'll be fine (as he discovered in further research and posted) as circuit breaker as opposed to fast-acting fuse has enough inherent lag time for the motor...
Congratulations, Bill! I've had my Unisaw (Delta 36-844) for 6 years and have had no problems with #12 Romex (about 15ft from sub-panel) and this (standard?) Siemens breaker:
As others are pointing out, you'll be fine. Old fuses would blow with the initial spike of current when saw motor kicked on. A modern circuit breaker needs to heat up to trip (except in the case of a short) so it can't get hot enough to trip from the very short current spike of the motor's start-up.
At least that's my layman's explanation of it. :-)
"Fast-acting" ones, yes, "slo-blo" (specifically designed for motor loads and the like with an initial short-lived high-current transient) wouldn't.
...
The fuse had to heat up, too (in fact, it had to actually melt) but the idea is correct; they are designed to handle motor loads inherently to be general-purpose; it would be a real pain to have to have separate breakers for the application.
The time for a dead short to heat up and trip will be quite a lot shorter than that for the motor start; while a motor start is a (relatively) high current (say 3X or so of full load), that of a dead short is I=V/(R-->zero) --> Infinite.
Well, yes, I said that in the very beginning that his general ideas were/are correct but added some amplification as to "why" and "what" actually is going on.
No, in addition to the thermal detector, circuit breakers have a magnetic trip. A high enough current will trip the circuit before the thermal detector can trip.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.