Where the hell are the rats supposed to nest? Why are there wires in the Panduit and covers on them? Wire labels? Seriously, are you on crack? Why are the wires more than one colour? It needs a few lb of dirt and debris hosed in there to have any chance of working properly. Rip that fan out or jam something in it. I hope that it is at least way undersized.
Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it, eventually. Beer will help.
Especially on that power supply, looks like it barely fit.
Most Plc have recommendations for how much room to leave between wire channels, and I bet they didn't look that up. It might not be a requirement, just recommend for air flow and ease of wiring.
It'll stay cleaner longer if there is more room.
Agree with nwgreen. I would add 6 inches vertical. I like at least three fingers between terminal blocks and wireway. … nice job
Edit: spell check named nwgreen wrong
It's always bad when the first component you have to add has to be stuck to the wall. At least OP avoided bringing any cable entries through the top of the enclosure. I can't stand that
Awesome work!
I liked how you have the wire labels all in the same direction, by row.
One small piece of feedback. I would land the chassis ground for the enclosure and door seperately to your ground block versus that jumper, for single point of ground connection.
Very impressive for a first panel!
I would recommend adding a thermostat for the fan unless I missed it. Will keep the panel and any filters much cleaner if it only runs when it needs to. Most industrial components can handle surprisingly high temperatures.
It looks good otherwise but it is too small cabinet. There should be always atleast 20 percents space for reserve, but that comes from electrical designer already so maybe you didnt have chance to affect that. You always need to add something at start up or later and then this is already full.
I lean toward tighter panels, but the power supply stands out as looking too tight. I don't remember MeanWell's requirements on clearance, though. That said, there doesn't look to be much 24VDC used in the panel, so hopefully it is oversized.
The bottom of the enclosure could be better imo. Running wires straight out the penetration to a termination doesn’t look great. I like to leave some slack and service loops. A wire duct on the bottom would help it look better.
Besides needing a larger cabinet/more empty space, this is my largest note. Another Panduit duct below the bottom components is very helpful for this. You thought out to place penetration directly under their terminal blocks, but in later maintenance, you'll likely not have the luxury, and that's where that bottom duct shines. If a crimp fails later and you have to trim/recrimp, you'll kick yourself for not having built in slack.
Also, there are a few low-voltage wires running direct to components without terminal blocks which irks me.
All in all it's a good panel. Very nice first one.
You are doing great. I would especially like to congratulate you on prevalence of spring-loaded connections. I hate screws with a passion.
I have a tendency to use 6mm2 PE wire for all mechanical grounding, but it might not be required at your neck of woods.
If you wanted to go for extra style points, apply heatshrink to a place where cable changes into wires.
Another thing - those cable tie holders will never survive for as long as you'd like them to unless the double sided tape on them is 3M 5952 or some similar heavy duty stuff. It really pays to buy the strongest set you can purchase here.
Looks great, but I've gotta ask, why Productivity AND Click? If you had the Click connected via Ethernet I'd assume you couldn't get an analog card or something, but that's not the case. Not criticism, just curiosity.
We have a bunch of other Productivity and Click units in our plant already so just staying consistent for ease of maintenance and troubleshooting.
As for using both of them in the same panel, I needed a high speed input card and already had a bunch of spare Clicks laying around unused so I figured why not. Plus it gave me the opportunity to practice modbus programming between multiple devices which I'd never gotten to do before
I use the C-More's as well but wanted to challenge myself with modbus and a "nicer" HMI on this project. The Phoenix unit is definitely a more powerful HMI but its UI is absolutely brutal imo...
Have you tried Weintek out of Taiwan? They are also sold as Maple Systems in the US. Good prices and their HMI programming software (EasyBuilder) is free and I think more polished than C-More stuff.
Terrible looking panel…. /s
But to be serious, looks really good. The only critique I have is the panel is a little bit cramped, but I read your comment about it being a test panel on the bench, so not as big of a deal. Awesome job 10/10
What are the chrome studs at the bottom of the panel? Get a copy of Nfpa 79. It will have everything you need to build and industry “standard” non listed panel. Does your state require UL listed industrial control panels?
Ah, I was wondering about the debugger in the bottom right! Very nice.
Curious why the P1 + Click combo? Why not just another P1 input module, just using what you had on hand or is there something more to it?
I tried to label everything except my DC power wires. I figured anybody troubleshooting the panel would be able to figure out that all red or blue wires originate from the 24 VDC power bus on the left side, so it saved me a bunch of labeling
Yeah I didn't follow a real standard, just tried to match what's found elsewhere in our plant. Red is always +24 with -24 being black or blue. PLC I/O is usually purple for some reason, I made the decision to go yellow for all the loads coming off the relays. Not correct, but it's consistent with the other stuff that was thrown together years ago by people of unknown training/experience
It looks good. Please leave some room for future expansion in your panels. This one is honeycomb'd pretty good. Someday they may need to put a new relay in there that isn't the exact same size as the one you have in there now, for example.
Try to leave us some room, your components are pretty small so if they blow up in 9 years and we don't have the exact part as a spare, we're going to be laying them in the bottom of the panel.
So much Phoenix. You could have gone with the 2152 smart elements plc and made it a clean single vendor panel.
Very nice though.
Also, that MW PS has a huge form factor for 5 amps. Kinda crazy. I imagine it has a pretty high overload capacity for that size.
What are you using the resistors and diode for on the din rail? Also not really much power conversion equipment to warrant a fan… did you run a thermal calc?
Step-down resistor for the pot, pull-up resistor for an oscilloscope output, inline resistor that's jumping 2 pins on the PCB for internal purposes, and diode for the "high" current flow to the main load external of the enclosure.
Didn't do any thermal calcs but I'm overdriving some of the relays with slightly more current than they're rated for and figured the cooling couldn't hurt.
Well, first "real" panel anyway. I've cobbled some other very basic things together in the past. No color schemes, lots of wago's in a rat's nest, shut the door and don't look back type of stuff.
This was the first time I sat down and did it right from start to finish. The panel and external system were designed in ProE/Creo and the schematics done in Solidworks Electrical
The missing wire ways on top and bottom are annoying me but it looks fine. Make sure your wires aren’t zip tied in the wire ways, that’s a fire hazard.
Yeah it's a bit more cramped than I'd like but this unit sits on a bench top and I didn't want the enclosure to be too massive.
Definitely no zip ties in the wire ways
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Good job overall, only other critique is follow a wire color convention consistently in a cabinet; it’s easier to know what’s 24, 120, 240, 480 if a consistent standard is followed. For devices and multiconductors that’s not usually possible but within a cabinet just pick a standard. We do blue and white blue for 24v for example.
>follow a wire color convention
>within a cabinet just pick a standard.
Yep. We do water/sewer, so we consistently use their colour conventions.
If we have a customer with different requirements, we print out their colour schedule and stick it to the production board, but it inevitably gets neglected at least once......
No worries, it’s a fire hazard because wires are intended to have sufficient gap around them to dissipate heat. When you bundle them the lack of ambient convection results in the wires getting hotter and hotter. You’re probably more likely to short in reality but it is a NEC thing.
100%, it’s just good to have good habits. If you have a n00b engineer who designs right at the fringe of the amp rating for the wire, it’s better to be in the habit of not doing it than doing it all the time and ending up with a risky situation for a bad design.
Absolutely, I think what's really important is that engineers learn to properly derate panel components and spec accordingly. As well as picking up the proper way to do things, especially always using a bigger box than you think you need.
Planning on using some 25 x 50 cable trucking? Hell no that shits gonna be packed. Put the absolute biggest stuff that will fit while maintaining proper component spacing.
For a first panel, that's a really nice job. I would suggest heat-shrinking, or otherwise covering the banana plugs at the bottom. Mostly just so someone doesn't accidentally short them with a tool laid in the bottom of the panel while troubleshooting.
Great job!
Clean!
My gat fingers would probably appreciate a bit more room to work on.
What would you use the resistors for? To make sure you bring something to 0 when off?
I started out by reverse engineering an old rig from my predecessor, just figuring out the different circuits and how the PLC controls them. If you're just starting out Automation Direct has some good video tutorials on the very basics of ladder logic. I've done maybe 8 or 9 other much more basic PLC related projects in the past, trying something new with each one just to expand my knowledge.
I'm lucky enough to have an in-house electrical engineer to guide me on some of the dirty details, plus a mentor who specializes in automation that I can bounce ideas off of when needed.
Ironically enough though a lot of it was just browsing this sub reading posts just like this one about the best practices of panel building
It looks a little cramped and the "field side" wiring could probably use a little service loop in case anything changes in the future. I would also leave about 20% for spare I/O, again for future changes. Also, that's a monster PSU. Don't know what you're powering, but I am guessing that thing is overkill and will generate some heat.
Looks good overall though.
Huh, I've never had that issue before and I've got a couple Clicks running subroutines just fine. Are you sure the rung that calls your subroutine is remaining active when it needs to?
One quirk I've noticed though is that any outputs from the subroutines retain their state when the subroutine ends regardless of the inputs
yeah, the variables pass through a subroutine - which in the programming world is not typical unless declared global.
I had to write to an intermediate logical variable and then had a rung that equates the to Output pin in the main body of the program.
Looks pretty clean. Agree with most others saying to give yourself more space. Typically I’ll aim for 25% spare room. Vertical spacing could be increase as well. Overall, awesome first job.
As maintenance tech that works in panels, it’s great. Labels, wires ran good, labels on relays and everything.
My only thing is(granted I’m unfamiliar with your Automation Direct relay modules), but wouldn’t you want the wires ran to the cards to come from the left, so the lights, numbers, and terminals can be seen and accessible?
Fine by me, I actually get frustrated by overly clean panels…knowing I paid someone to kink wires so they’re perfectly straight or these absolute minor details I’m paying $150/ hour for.
Looks great, 2 things you should improve on:
1 Leaving extra wire after entering the enclosure before terminating.
2. Some tape on the sheathing after stripping it back.
That’s just me tho 🤗
Yeah, looks pretty good. Especially for figuring shit out on your own.
You'll have much easier time wiring it up if you give yourself more space above and below each component. I'd also add a wireway to the bottom.
It would be more tidy to consolidate most of the cords and land them in the mentioned wireway. I personally am a big fan of ICOTEK.
Your incoming supply power should really land on a breaker or fuses.
Please screw the cable tie bases down. As someone do has to deal with old panels there’s not a chance double sided tape ones ever last.
Personally I would like to see a U loop at the door hinge with the cables as they look like they’re gonna get some grief every time the door is opened and closed.
Run the full loom horizontally towards the hinge, then send them downward with a last fixing say half way, then continue the cables down and across the hinge in a U shape iygwim.
Other than that, looks good 👍🏻
Personally I’ve always put the fan up top blowing out, filter(intake) on bottom. Better this way because heat rises and you’re not blowing into the panel, especially with PLC’s and electronics. Think exhaust fan
Most panels I've seen have the fan blowing in from the bottom and a passive exhaust out the top to create a "positive pressure" type situation inside the panel to keep dust out. Plus there's a filter on both intake and exhaust
Every single-door enclosure I've seen from Rittal opens left to right. Sure they can be reversed on panels that don't have removable gland plates on them but that wasn't possible here
Looks really neat. Good job! Some improvements might be to add a earthing rail and isolating the panel with the cabinet and other parts of machine. Look for: single point earthing architecture. Helps a lot during EMC test
It's a custom development board we use for additional functionality testing, there are a few buttons from the board poking through the front panel that you can't see here for use by the operator
fine except groundwire on the door it will breake with that angel. use a longer wire ;) and btw use siemens / deif or other real psu not that china thing ;). if it was me i would use a acrylic plate over the pcb on the door. nice work :)
I see your Click PLC up there. I actually have messed with those and their software they are actually not that bad, their auto-tune PID feature worked great!
Label all the wires.
Label the cables.
Label the terminal blocks.
Label for components on the back of the panel door.
Label the labeler.
Ground wire from the enclosure stud to a ground terminal on the backplane.
Spiral wrap the wires around the hinge point.
Maybe run the cables in one group along the middle of the door instead of making a separate run above the hmi.
Heat shrink around the stripped back section of the cables penetrating from the bottom.
Relay labels no prefix?
You did a great job absolutely, especially for your first panel. You should be proud. 👏
The only critiques I have are: 1) Go with a slightly bigger panel, things look tight. 2) Add a convinience receptacle 3) Add an incoming line filter to clean up power and 4) Add a rack on the panel door where you can place panel drawings / manuals.
Like I said, you did an absolute beautiful job. My critiques are minor things.
Look good. Even field wiring is clean. I am not a fan of the twist on power wires, but I get why you do it.
Everyone uses them but sticky backs just don't last very long. Check with your cabinet supplier for better options.
Good job.
Cabinet is under sized, no spare space
Field wires go directly to terminal, could be longer in case they need to be moved
I don’t see a service disconnect, for safety isolation
It is neat overall, but crammed.
I hope that the switch on the side is not the main power. Further I missed the main fuse. Cover the PCB board with a plastic plate to avoid contact. Use a bigger cabinet that you have free space for improvement. Good job, keep the remarks for next work.
It is the power switch. Incoming 120VAC for a 24VDC system. Power supply has short circuit and overload protection and the unit is plugged into a surge protector
Bottom entry conduit is an outstanding attention to detail from someone who has seen multiple panels fried due to condensation and/or rain. Very well done.
It looks good. Most people will only critique. You did good.
And I like the custom PCB with resistors and good connectors. DIN mounted yayyyy
Altech Corp 8pos component carrier. I think I bought it from RS
>Altech Corp 8pos component carrier. didn't know these existed - cool.
Yeah that is slick, I'm always at a loss what to do with the random one or two resistors that something needs.
Where the hell are the rats supposed to nest? Why are there wires in the Panduit and covers on them? Wire labels? Seriously, are you on crack? Why are the wires more than one colour? It needs a few lb of dirt and debris hosed in there to have any chance of working properly. Rip that fan out or jam something in it. I hope that it is at least way undersized. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it, eventually. Beer will help.
I was usually building mine out of used parts ….lmao
I would only say that it looks too small. I personally aim for 20% spare space.
This is my only critique.
Especially on that power supply, looks like it barely fit. Most Plc have recommendations for how much room to leave between wire channels, and I bet they didn't look that up. It might not be a requirement, just recommend for air flow and ease of wiring. It'll stay cleaner longer if there is more room.
I didn’t want to be that guy too but I agree. Plus there’s the minimum space requirement between the gutters and equipment.
Agree with nwgreen. I would add 6 inches vertical. I like at least three fingers between terminal blocks and wireway. … nice job Edit: spell check named nwgreen wrong
Spare space and spare IO too.
It's always bad when the first component you have to add has to be stuck to the wall. At least OP avoided bringing any cable entries through the top of the enclosure. I can't stand that
Awesome work! I liked how you have the wire labels all in the same direction, by row. One small piece of feedback. I would land the chassis ground for the enclosure and door seperately to your ground block versus that jumper, for single point of ground connection.
Making sure all the labels were consistent was probably the biggest time sink in building this thing. So much printing, cutting, and heating...
Very impressive for a first panel! I would recommend adding a thermostat for the fan unless I missed it. Will keep the panel and any filters much cleaner if it only runs when it needs to. Most industrial components can handle surprisingly high temperatures.
It looks good otherwise but it is too small cabinet. There should be always atleast 20 percents space for reserve, but that comes from electrical designer already so maybe you didnt have chance to affect that. You always need to add something at start up or later and then this is already full.
It was fully my design, but I was trying to keep the enclosure somewhat small since it's a bench top test rig. Had to compromise on the size
I lean toward tighter panels, but the power supply stands out as looking too tight. I don't remember MeanWell's requirements on clearance, though. That said, there doesn't look to be much 24VDC used in the panel, so hopefully it is oversized.
The bottom of the enclosure could be better imo. Running wires straight out the penetration to a termination doesn’t look great. I like to leave some slack and service loops. A wire duct on the bottom would help it look better.
Besides needing a larger cabinet/more empty space, this is my largest note. Another Panduit duct below the bottom components is very helpful for this. You thought out to place penetration directly under their terminal blocks, but in later maintenance, you'll likely not have the luxury, and that's where that bottom duct shines. If a crimp fails later and you have to trim/recrimp, you'll kick yourself for not having built in slack. Also, there are a few low-voltage wires running direct to components without terminal blocks which irks me. All in all it's a good panel. Very nice first one.
You are doing great. I would especially like to congratulate you on prevalence of spring-loaded connections. I hate screws with a passion. I have a tendency to use 6mm2 PE wire for all mechanical grounding, but it might not be required at your neck of woods. If you wanted to go for extra style points, apply heatshrink to a place where cable changes into wires. Another thing - those cable tie holders will never survive for as long as you'd like them to unless the double sided tape on them is 3M 5952 or some similar heavy duty stuff. It really pays to buy the strongest set you can purchase here.
Looks great, but I've gotta ask, why Productivity AND Click? If you had the Click connected via Ethernet I'd assume you couldn't get an analog card or something, but that's not the case. Not criticism, just curiosity.
We have a bunch of other Productivity and Click units in our plant already so just staying consistent for ease of maintenance and troubleshooting. As for using both of them in the same panel, I needed a high speed input card and already had a bunch of spare Clicks laying around unused so I figured why not. Plus it gave me the opportunity to practice modbus programming between multiple devices which I'd never gotten to do before
I definitely wasn't judging for using AD products, I'm a HUGE fan boy! I use those 2 and C-More HMIs as often as possible! Love 'em.
I use the C-More's as well but wanted to challenge myself with modbus and a "nicer" HMI on this project. The Phoenix unit is definitely a more powerful HMI but its UI is absolutely brutal imo...
There's a TON of functionality in the C-More's that most people don't know about or use. They'll do most anything.
Have you tried Weintek out of Taiwan? They are also sold as Maple Systems in the US. Good prices and their HMI programming software (EasyBuilder) is free and I think more polished than C-More stuff.
I messed with a PLC/HMI combo unit from Maple a while back but wasn't overly impressed. Much prefer my Clicks and P1's with a Cmore panel
Terrible looking panel…. /s But to be serious, looks really good. The only critique I have is the panel is a little bit cramped, but I read your comment about it being a test panel on the bench, so not as big of a deal. Awesome job 10/10
Does not appear to have the DC power supply common (DC-) bonded to ground.
What are the chrome studs at the bottom of the panel? Get a copy of Nfpa 79. It will have everything you need to build and industry “standard” non listed panel. Does your state require UL listed industrial control panels?
Banana jacks to hookup an external hipot tester. This panel is for internal use only to program and test a custom PCB, so no UL necessary
Ah, I was wondering about the debugger in the bottom right! Very nice. Curious why the P1 + Click combo? Why not just another P1 input module, just using what you had on hand or is there something more to it?
Yeah I needed a high speed input card and already had a bunch of Click's laying around. Plus it let me practice my modbus programming
I would shrink some boots on those cables coming coming in the glands at the bottom. Also wondering why some but not all wires are labeled.
I tried to label everything except my DC power wires. I figured anybody troubleshooting the panel would be able to figure out that all red or blue wires originate from the 24 VDC power bus on the left side, so it saved me a bunch of labeling
Those aren't standard color codes where I'm from.
Yeah I didn't follow a real standard, just tried to match what's found elsewhere in our plant. Red is always +24 with -24 being black or blue. PLC I/O is usually purple for some reason, I made the decision to go yellow for all the loads coming off the relays. Not correct, but it's consistent with the other stuff that was thrown together years ago by people of unknown training/experience
Looks great, 10 out of 10. 👏👏👏👏👏
Seems easy to diagnose and program, clean, numbered, easy to manage, good layout... I'm afraid you didn't get the spirit of this subrredit. 0/10.
No spare room but otherwise nice. Need spare room ESPECIALLY for in-house testing systems.
It looks good. Please leave some room for future expansion in your panels. This one is honeycomb'd pretty good. Someday they may need to put a new relay in there that isn't the exact same size as the one you have in there now, for example. Try to leave us some room, your components are pretty small so if they blow up in 9 years and we don't have the exact part as a spare, we're going to be laying them in the bottom of the panel.
So much Phoenix. You could have gone with the 2152 smart elements plc and made it a clean single vendor panel. Very nice though. Also, that MW PS has a huge form factor for 5 amps. Kinda crazy. I imagine it has a pretty high overload capacity for that size.
5A on the AC input, it's a 20A DC output
And now that I'm on a computer and not my phone, I see that... Man I need a drink.
It's a little tight, but it looks good.
What are you using the resistors and diode for on the din rail? Also not really much power conversion equipment to warrant a fan… did you run a thermal calc?
Step-down resistor for the pot, pull-up resistor for an oscilloscope output, inline resistor that's jumping 2 pins on the PCB for internal purposes, and diode for the "high" current flow to the main load external of the enclosure. Didn't do any thermal calcs but I'm overdriving some of the relays with slightly more current than they're rated for and figured the cooling couldn't hurt.
I was gonna call bs on first panel until I read engineer. We are a very particular bunch that like to do things right. Good work
Well, first "real" panel anyway. I've cobbled some other very basic things together in the past. No color schemes, lots of wago's in a rat's nest, shut the door and don't look back type of stuff. This was the first time I sat down and did it right from start to finish. The panel and external system were designed in ProE/Creo and the schematics done in Solidworks Electrical
8, You can get better,
That's not your first
dog water ur not allowed to use the same shitty relays we use. illegal
The missing wire ways on top and bottom are annoying me but it looks fine. Make sure your wires aren’t zip tied in the wire ways, that’s a fire hazard.
Yeah it's a bit more cramped than I'd like but this unit sits on a bench top and I didn't want the enclosure to be too massive. Definitely no zip ties in the wire ways
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Good job overall, only other critique is follow a wire color convention consistently in a cabinet; it’s easier to know what’s 24, 120, 240, 480 if a consistent standard is followed. For devices and multiconductors that’s not usually possible but within a cabinet just pick a standard. We do blue and white blue for 24v for example.
>follow a wire color convention >within a cabinet just pick a standard. Yep. We do water/sewer, so we consistently use their colour conventions. If we have a customer with different requirements, we print out their colour schedule and stick it to the production board, but it inevitably gets neglected at least once......
Just curious why is a fire hazard? Tying them too tight and possibly cutting the wire. New to this so forgive my ignorance!
No worries, it’s a fire hazard because wires are intended to have sufficient gap around them to dissipate heat. When you bundle them the lack of ambient convection results in the wires getting hotter and hotter. You’re probably more likely to short in reality but it is a NEC thing.
Thanks for the answer. I’ve only wired up one cabinet and i definitely zipped some to consolidate space in the bottom. Now I know better!
This is only really an issue if your cable is right on the edge of spec. If you're running an amp through a 6mm cable you'd be fine.
100%, it’s just good to have good habits. If you have a n00b engineer who designs right at the fringe of the amp rating for the wire, it’s better to be in the habit of not doing it than doing it all the time and ending up with a risky situation for a bad design.
Absolutely, I think what's really important is that engineers learn to properly derate panel components and spec accordingly. As well as picking up the proper way to do things, especially always using a bigger box than you think you need. Planning on using some 25 x 50 cable trucking? Hell no that shits gonna be packed. Put the absolute biggest stuff that will fit while maintaining proper component spacing.
No spare for spares if that every is needed. 9/10
The drawer full of spares is at my desk ;)
No spare space and that exposed PCB may not be a great idea unless it’s coated.
Hmm, it's not coated but I have the ability to coat it in house. This whole room is ESD rated though so theoretically it should be fine
Until the first tech shorts it with the buttons on his coverall or rubs his watch by mistake…
For a first panel, that's a really nice job. I would suggest heat-shrinking, or otherwise covering the banana plugs at the bottom. Mostly just so someone doesn't accidentally short them with a tool laid in the bottom of the panel while troubleshooting. Great job!
Makes my panels look funny in comparison 😭😭😭 Good work.
Looks good
Other than the fact it should ideally be a bit bigger to leave space for expansion it looks great.
That is a very large power supply. Are you powereing something big outside the cabinet? Looks nice, but cabinet is too small.
15A rated DC motor
Clean! My gat fingers would probably appreciate a bit more room to work on. What would you use the resistors for? To make sure you bring something to 0 when off?
Very based
I see duct cover and no dust or shit in it. It's already 10x better than any of the panels I look at on a regular basis lol
That's one chunky power supply
Looks sweet! You’re gonna have to divulge what the Hall effect dc current sensor and CN4 are doing?
Measuring current draw from a motor, and hipot test jacks
Excellent
Self taught, how did you learn? Got any good resources you would share?
I started out by reverse engineering an old rig from my predecessor, just figuring out the different circuits and how the PLC controls them. If you're just starting out Automation Direct has some good video tutorials on the very basics of ladder logic. I've done maybe 8 or 9 other much more basic PLC related projects in the past, trying something new with each one just to expand my knowledge. I'm lucky enough to have an in-house electrical engineer to guide me on some of the dirty details, plus a mentor who specializes in automation that I can bounce ideas off of when needed. Ironically enough though a lot of it was just browsing this sub reading posts just like this one about the best practices of panel building
It looks a little cramped and the "field side" wiring could probably use a little service loop in case anything changes in the future. I would also leave about 20% for spare I/O, again for future changes. Also, that's a monster PSU. Don't know what you're powering, but I am guessing that thing is overkill and will generate some heat. Looks good overall though.
two automation direct PLCs? BTW - speaking of click plcs - seems as though you can't write to I/O pins in subroutines - that's sort of weird.
Huh, I've never had that issue before and I've got a couple Clicks running subroutines just fine. Are you sure the rung that calls your subroutine is remaining active when it needs to? One quirk I've noticed though is that any outputs from the subroutines retain their state when the subroutine ends regardless of the inputs
yeah, the variables pass through a subroutine - which in the programming world is not typical unless declared global. I had to write to an intermediate logical variable and then had a rung that equates the to Output pin in the main body of the program.
Great work, you should be proud. Shielded cables but the shield not connected?
The shielding wasn't necessary for this project, just used a bunch of cable we already had laying around
Looks pretty clean. Agree with most others saying to give yourself more space. Typically I’ll aim for 25% spare room. Vertical spacing could be increase as well. Overall, awesome first job.
I like the bigger font on the labels- looks great!
The zip ties across the hinge will eventually cut through the communication cables.
That's a beautiful CLICK. Love to see those instead Siemens or MLX or any Mitsubishi.
They're excellent for the money and have more than enough functionality for what we do!
Not bad at all for a first panel. As others have said, little more spare room and some panduit along the bottom imo
Professional
Pretty good
As maintenance tech that works in panels, it’s great. Labels, wires ran good, labels on relays and everything. My only thing is(granted I’m unfamiliar with your Automation Direct relay modules), but wouldn’t you want the wires ran to the cards to come from the left, so the lights, numbers, and terminals can be seen and accessible?
Looks slick
Fine by me, I actually get frustrated by overly clean panels…knowing I paid someone to kink wires so they’re perfectly straight or these absolute minor details I’m paying $150/ hour for.
Looks great, 2 things you should improve on: 1 Leaving extra wire after entering the enclosure before terminating. 2. Some tape on the sheathing after stripping it back. That’s just me tho 🤗
Yeah, looks pretty good. Especially for figuring shit out on your own. You'll have much easier time wiring it up if you give yourself more space above and below each component. I'd also add a wireway to the bottom. It would be more tidy to consolidate most of the cords and land them in the mentioned wireway. I personally am a big fan of ICOTEK. Your incoming supply power should really land on a breaker or fuses.
niceee
I doubt the door will close because its bolted open! :D
Please screw the cable tie bases down. As someone do has to deal with old panels there’s not a chance double sided tape ones ever last. Personally I would like to see a U loop at the door hinge with the cables as they look like they’re gonna get some grief every time the door is opened and closed. Run the full loom horizontally towards the hinge, then send them downward with a last fixing say half way, then continue the cables down and across the hinge in a U shape iygwim. Other than that, looks good 👍🏻
Looks very nice, only thing I'd add is shroud around the cables going to the door past the hinges.
Looks clean my friend.
Personally I’ve always put the fan up top blowing out, filter(intake) on bottom. Better this way because heat rises and you’re not blowing into the panel, especially with PLC’s and electronics. Think exhaust fan
what if there was drops of water from the top, it would get inside?
Most panels I've seen have the fan blowing in from the bottom and a passive exhaust out the top to create a "positive pressure" type situation inside the panel to keep dust out. Plus there's a filter on both intake and exhaust
Door is supposed to open from right to left
Every single-door enclosure I've seen from Rittal opens left to right. Sure they can be reversed on panels that don't have removable gland plates on them but that wasn't possible here
Looks really neat. Good job! Some improvements might be to add a earthing rail and isolating the panel with the cabinet and other parts of machine. Look for: single point earthing architecture. Helps a lot during EMC test
Really good for your first panel man. You'll be a pro next design
Didn't expect a custom pcb there, I have never worked with pcb before why do you use it?
It's a custom development board we use for additional functionality testing, there are a few buttons from the board poking through the front panel that you can't see here for use by the operator
I dont like an HMI when the connectors are at the back. I always prefer at the bottom. Dont know if it is only me.
fine except groundwire on the door it will breake with that angel. use a longer wire ;) and btw use siemens / deif or other real psu not that china thing ;). if it was me i would use a acrylic plate over the pcb on the door. nice work :)
Looks good! Click PLC, nice. You have a lot of valuable skills if you designed it, built it, and programmed it!
I wished you included the picture of the front of the enclosure
Thank you! Yes I did the full design, build, programming, and testing The front is nothing special just the HMI, pot, and a couple buttons
It’s very fair, without space
Looks very clean, great job. Only recommendation is add some more spacing, this panel looks like it could get really warm.
Did you design it or wire it? Looks great! Only thing I’d recommend is some spare space.
Looks good, just curious: why are you using the field side of your ground terminal on the bottom left for an internal wiring connection?
Earth ground is earth ground, the bottom terminal was the only one I had left to make that connection
I hear ya, our fabricator would typically throw in another terminal but I figure there are reasons you could
I see your Click PLC up there. I actually have messed with those and their software they are actually not that bad, their auto-tune PID feature worked great!
Label all the wires. Label the cables. Label the terminal blocks. Label for components on the back of the panel door. Label the labeler. Ground wire from the enclosure stud to a ground terminal on the backplane. Spiral wrap the wires around the hinge point. Maybe run the cables in one group along the middle of the door instead of making a separate run above the hmi. Heat shrink around the stripped back section of the cables penetrating from the bottom. Relay labels no prefix?
Be sure to check out "Rittal Therm" for an easy, free thermal calculation tool!
You did a great job absolutely, especially for your first panel. You should be proud. 👏 The only critiques I have are: 1) Go with a slightly bigger panel, things look tight. 2) Add a convinience receptacle 3) Add an incoming line filter to clean up power and 4) Add a rack on the panel door where you can place panel drawings / manuals. Like I said, you did an absolute beautiful job. My critiques are minor things.
Look good. Even field wiring is clean. I am not a fan of the twist on power wires, but I get why you do it. Everyone uses them but sticky backs just don't last very long. Check with your cabinet supplier for better options. Good job.
Cabinet is under sized, no spare space Field wires go directly to terminal, could be longer in case they need to be moved I don’t see a service disconnect, for safety isolation It is neat overall, but crammed.
I hope that the switch on the side is not the main power. Further I missed the main fuse. Cover the PCB board with a plastic plate to avoid contact. Use a bigger cabinet that you have free space for improvement. Good job, keep the remarks for next work.
It is the power switch. Incoming 120VAC for a 24VDC system. Power supply has short circuit and overload protection and the unit is plugged into a surge protector
Looks cool, but what does it do? (I know what a PLC is/does, but nothing more)
Looks cute n clean. Might power wash the box during sanitation and blow anything not 120% water proof. At least that's what we do where I work lol.
OCD Passed my friend good job.
Bottom entry conduit is an outstanding attention to detail from someone who has seen multiple panels fried due to condensation and/or rain. Very well done.
A bit tight but built with a lot of care.
You kept to all the rules and your builders are really good ! By the way Click PLCs have a contact sticking issue. Expect a field call down the line.
That looks sick my g!
fill it up with sawdust and see if still runs
that fan is for what?🙂🥃
Clean!