Abstract: A new permanent magnet AC contactor was presented. When the contactor encounters breaking failure, the contactor can be forced to break under the actuation of a designed protection mechanism. A control circuit was developed to work with the making and breaking operations. The circuit was developed as two separate parts, the normal working circuit and the protection circuit. The normal working circuit was used for the normal operations and the protection circuit was used for the breaking protection when failure happened. In order to increase the working reliability, the power supply to the protection circuit was designed separately with the power of the normal working circuit. The power supply to the protection circuit was selected as the 380 V line voltage of the contactor contacts and the circuit was developed based on digital logic circuit design, without MCU. Time delay between the breaking control voltage and the auxiliary contact voltage was investigated. This time delay was used in the logic circuit design. Experimental results show that when the normal working circuit or the demagnetization coil encounters failure, the proposed contactor still can break effectively and potential electric damages can be avoided.