My Panel

alarm man · Sep 4, 2012

ash,its shocking mate,not strictly your fault and youve been brave posting the pics and the obvious grief you would get,but all the above should point you in the right direction of panel building,stick to your guns next time,as at the end of the day,that panel left the workshop with your name on it..

vaughant · Sep 4, 2012

Well done for coming on ash and talking us through what went on etc and showing it wasn't the finished article.
Being honest mate no panel should ever be assembled without trunking,in fact I've never seen one in 20 years that hasn't,it's super shoddy.
As for spirap etc it's great stuff but to learn properly and make for a far cheaper alternative then use looming cord,I never touched spirap until I left the training school but it's common now.
Its hard working for a firm that won't back you but if your a maintenance man then there's lots of opportunities to move on to something that appreciates your efforts a bit more and actually backs you up rather than saying "no" all the time.
Dont just accept having crap spelling,it's hateful to read text speak etc and through no fault of your own schools have let spelling/grammar/punctuation decline so far over the last 15 years when labour came in that you've probably never been corrected for it the way we were!!!
I'm naturally good at English etc probably because I'm Welsh (which sounds odd but it makes you try a bit harder) and had a good education although others I know drastically improved their spelling by simply reading a lot more.
Where are you based? I'm guessing Wales yourself being a Williams??

silva.foxx · Sep 4, 2012

Ashley Williams said:
We are not a panel building company we are just a small maintenance department the press has gone to one of our other sites! So any maintenance would be carried out this is there justification for lack of things!

Ash

Firstly, thanks for showing your work.
Secondly, holes are rightfully being blown into this example!

You have stated you are not a panel building company... who has verified your circuit design in relation to the Press risk assessment?

Presses... are they covered by special regulations?

Your 400vac (assumed as no signs) feed wiring is in black... your +24vdc is in black... your switched neutral is in blue... your PSU supply (230vac) is in blue... your -24vdc is in blue... You say you want to raise standards... DO IT BY ADHERING TO CURRENT STANDARDS.

Is it an earthed ELV control circuit?

Your lack of wire numbers may be omitted assuming your schematics are spot-on! I take it you have schematics... if so are they computer drafted?

What are you powering with that PSU? It's huge. What is it rated at? 10 or 20A?

These days anything over four relays should be replaced with a programmable logic block or smart relay... thats not to say it must be.

Safety relay? To what safety category have you installed to? Are external monitoring contacts used as part of resetting the light barrier?

What tells you that the motor DOL has tripped? If it alerts the operator then it prevents him fiddling when he can't start the m/c.

Are we to assume all your field wiring leaves from the top of the panel?

I'm not keen on your control wiring passing so close over the supply of the isolator.

Your last sentence... they should not be left wanting!

Please show a photo of your schematics.

regards
s.f

Ashley Williams · Sep 4, 2012

Im based in Oswestry Shropshire, But work in Wrexham, North Wales.

Again i am happy to recieve any advice and help i have recieved no proper training or guidance from a proper panel builder. Now you mention in i to have never seen an electrical panel without trunking.

Next panel i build i will insist apon trunking and ill post some pictures up when im done.

Ash

trev · Sep 4, 2012

Guys I reckon some of us should cut this lad just a little slack here, in his OP he clearly states he's an apprentice. Ok he's nearly out of his time but nonetheless he is still an apprentice and as such is still under the guidance and supervision of someone qualified (I hope). He's posted the pic up because he's feeling a little proud of something he's done which is why I only said what I did in my first reply to him. Yes there's problems but they're not down to him imho

alarm man · Sep 4, 2012

to be fair trev i dont think hes been lashed that much,but he said hes done lots of panel building,and thats not a panel any day of the week,again hes taken it well and will probably learn which is the whole point we all have done poor jobs,its all learning,but someone somewhere in that company feels its ok to send scrap out as a finished job,i think ash will learn more on here than from his master at work..

trev · Sep 4, 2012

Alarm man as usual you make some bloody good points there mate, I just thought it was heading for a severe lashing and thought maybe a little step back was in order given his status. I agree that's not a panel but if that's the way you've been shown how to do something that's the way you do it because you know no better.

Guitarist · Sep 4, 2012

trev said:
Guys I reckon some of us should cut this lad just a little slack here, in his OP he clearly states he's an apprentice. Ok he's nearly out of his time but nonetheless he is still an apprentice and as such is still under the guidance and supervision of someone qualified (I hope). He's posted the pic up because he's feeling a little proud of something he's done which is why I only said what I did in my first reply to him. Yes there's problems but they're not down to him imho

Well, I tried to help him spell "apprentice", but instead of a thanks he simply told me that he's never been good at spelling and never will be!! No helping some people..... :banghead:

vaughant · Sep 4, 2012

trev said:
Alarm man as usual you make some bloody good points there mate, I just thought it was heading for a severe lashing and thought maybe a little step back was in order given his status. I agree that's not a panel but if that's the way you've been shown how to do something that's the way you do it because you know no better.

I hope ash doesn't see it that way, and if anyone really digs in im sure we'll sort that out amongst us. I think he's taking all the points on board and as I said above he's clearly interested in all this and as a general starting point his panel has a few positives and given the circumstances it sounds as though he did ok.
As a note ash it's never wrong to question why your asked to do something that's clearly wrong,next time make up a full parts list first (most good installs include a bill of materials) and explain to your bosses that you'd like to use it for college etc so it has to be right as you'll get marked down etc,some bull like that as any costs should be passed onto the customer anyway.
Panel building is not a particularly specialist job,if you want to get into industrial control then it's a field you need to learn,most of my electrical apprenticeship was doing my own drawings from scratch then building the panel,testing it then an instructor would place faults on it that you found using the diagram and fault finding techniques etc.
It would be great if you could post the schematic up as their all done differently but this is a great way of advising on how to do a panel layout well before you even start thinking about connecting it up etc.
As for numbers and the associated tools numbering in my eyes is totally and utterly essential,only the laziest sparks will wire them up without.
If you get access to German schematics they generally use a good system,worth learning and copying!!!

alarm man · Sep 4, 2012

vaughant said:
I hope ash doesn't see it that way, and if anyone really digs in im sure we'll sort that out amongst us. I think he's taking all the points on board and as I said above he's clearly interested in all this and as a general starting point his panel has a few positives and given the circumstances it sounds as though he did ok.
As a note ash it's never wrong to question why your asked to do something that's clearly wrong,next time make up a full parts list first (most good installs include a bill of materials) and explain to your bosses that you'd like to use it for college etc so it has to be right as you'll get marked down etc,some bull like that as any costs should be passed onto the customer anyway.
Panel building is not a particularly specialist job,if you want to get into industrial control then it's a field you need to learn,most of my electrical apprenticeship was doing my own drawings from scratch then building the panel,testing it then an instructor would place faults on it that you found using the diagram and fault finding techniques etc.
It would be great if you could post the schematic up as their all done differently but this is a great way of advising on how to do a panel layout well before you even start thinking about connecting it up etc.
As for numbers and the associated tools numbering in my eyes is totally and utterly essential,only the laziest sparks will wire them up without.
If you get access to German schematics they generally use a good system,worth learning and copying!!!

agree with all that v,but the panel building isnt specialist,it may not be but its a art at the minimum,its a sparks version of a picasso,sometimes i would spend a few hours just tweaking a loom or make sure every term was square to make it look so,half a mill out might not look anything to some but to a panel man it was a mile,can be obsessive sometimes

silva.foxx · Sep 4, 2012

vaughant said:
...only the laziest sparks will wire them up without.
If you get access to German schematics they generally use a good system,worth learning and copying!!!

I don't class Germans as lazy sparks yet they do a good wiring system using contact numbers rather than wire IDs. They have spot-on schematics to supplement this type of wiring method.

As you've said...I've seen many-a-panel with no markers nor schematics. It's a character-building task when faultfinding them ones.

Engineer54 · Sep 5, 2012

silva.foxx said:
I don't class Germans as lazy sparks yet they do a good wiring system using contact numbers rather than wire IDs. They have spot-on schematics to supplement this type of wiring method.

As you've said...I've seen many-a-panel with no markers nor schematics. It's a character-building task when faultfinding them ones.

Well i for one am not a fan of German schematics, which mostly come in multiple sheets or A4 book form for even relatively small control panels. There schematics tend to send you all over the place, ...your forever flicking through different pages. Very difficult at times to get an overall view of what your working on. Much prefer the older UK system, which is basically what the Yanks still use. ...But then that's what i was trained using. lol!!!

Robotstar5 · Sep 5, 2012

Engineer54 said:
Well i for one am not a fan of German schematics, which mostly come in multiple sheets or A4 book form for even relatively small control panels. There schematics tend to send you all over the place, ...your forever flicking through different pages. Very difficult at times to get an overall view of what your working on.

Same here, although I don't have a lot of options when half of our machines are sourced through the German headquarters! A good example a few months ago when a safety relay was changed, it had 12-15 brown unmarked wires into top and the same on bottom, the guy was lucky he only got one wrong, still took me a while to sort as I had to disconnect and trace wires jumping all over the drawings!

Robotstar5 · Sep 5, 2012

Ashley Williams said:
I wanted to use trunking but was told i wasnt allowed and in all honesty there was little room for it as i did not order the enclosure most of the components where pre ordered by my boss while i was on holiday as he knew what i would need roughly! I would of preffered a slightly larger enclosure

I know the feeling when some one else orders the enclosure, in my case the engineer who designed the machine just left a space at the bottom hoping it would do!

It was tight....

big show · Sep 5, 2012

Engineer54 said:
I see that your company don't use panel wiring trunking (slotted/finger) in there panels!! Which is a shame, It makes internal panel wiring so much neater, and gives a professional finish to the job....

Ditto shame no slotted trunking but very nice anyway and I've seen a lot worse

My Panel

alarm man

vaughant

silva.foxx

Ashley Williams

-

trev

alarm man

trev

Guitarist

-

vaughant

alarm man

silva.foxx

Engineer54

Robotstar5

-

Robotstar5

-

big show

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