How to read electrical drawings (i can't)

[Shaun12]

For the past few years i've been working as an installation electrician. Mostly working on industrial sites and projects. We will install wiring, containment, panels and motors. I would say i'm pretty confident with any of that. I passed all of my exams throughout my apprenticeship without an issue and found the AM2 relatively easy.

However, recently whilst on a job we were asked to fault find in a panel that had had a fault on the security circuit for a piece of automated machinery. I was handed a set of drawings and being completely honest i didn't have a clue where to start. I have somehow managed to go through an entire apprenticeship without having to read a drawing to fault find. Luckily for me in this situation, the guy i was working with knew what he was doing so he lead the fault finding.

I guess i have just never faced the situation on site until now. At the moment these drawings might as well be in Japanese. How can i learn in my own time how to read them and be able to fault find using them? Does anyone have any tips or any suggestions on reading material or videos...

I feel pretty embarrassed about this....

 

[edexlab]

I've just tried it and your right it's not working , I just typed in
"reading electrical ladder drawings " to Google and this was an article for

"m ecmweb.com>Basics "

It just shows/explains the format or layout of a ladder diagram ie input/ output devices positions rungs and numbering ,Nc/No contacts might be too basic for you perhaps

 

[Shaun12]

oh ok. What I'm going to do is get some drawings from work and anything i'm not sure of ask here. I'm sure it will help others as well

 

[Spoon]

oh ok. What I'm going to do is get some drawings from work and anything i'm not sure of ask here. I'm sure it will help others as well

Good idea.

 

[edexlab]

I'm in the same sort of situation , although I do work in the factory as well as on site, the company here likes you to learn off your own back so I started looking at the drawings doing some research online and trying to figure out what's what,
their drawings are a bit different from conventional drawings and people here are not always forthcoming with information, some are good, but I don’t see them much
but the overall culture is to find out yourself !

The best thing I've done to improve my understanding was to take the drg and trace it through panels referencing the control drgs ( during my lunch ) starting from the incoming isolator all the way through

This made it all make much more sense!

Then I got lucky and got the chance to work on a machine with an engineer

I had to trace through all the circuits and check them against the drawing removing any unecessary modifications (machine was an experimental ) and then redoing it to his design.... this was a really good experience tbh and I feel I'm getting somewhere now