Any good books covering practical building of industrial control panels? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: calzap
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2020, 09:23:23 pm
content: I'm not looking for books on circuit design but for ones that cover topics like cabinet selection, physical layout, terminal blocks, DIN rails, wire duct, ventilation, wiring, etc. If they cover circuit design too, great, but I have books and other resources for that. So far, best resources I've found are some youtube videos.Mike in California

author: wizard69
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2020, 08:36:54 am
content: Well I'm not at work and I'm not even sure the reference exists anymore so I don't have a good recommendation in that regard. However if you are in the USA, panels will need to be compliant with the NEC (the National Electrical Code) and NFPA 79 (I believe). There are additional regulation for furnaces and other focuses areas or machines. In some locations the local authority may require a UL label on the control panel implementation.Now that doesn't help with some of the specifics you inquired about. In any event some points that might apply to your isues.Some industries like that auto industry had their own requirements beyond the NEC. It has been a while but they where called JIC requirements or Joint Industrial Council, so you have industry specific requirements. Now I have no idea if the industry still has such standards for control panels, it has literally been decades since I worked some place where they cared about such things.One of the things that JIC addressed was panel space layout. It seems like a universal problem that panels that are too small are specified by designers.There are regulations that are being enforced with regard to arc flash. If fully enforced that makes traditional debugging and working with in live high voltage/power panels illegal. To get around this some engineers are putting the low voltage stuff in a separate panel so that its arc flash rating can be reduced. This allows work & debugging to be done on a panel without having to suit up for what ever flash arc rating the rest of the panel has. In a nut shell anything you build has to be rated for arc flash safety.As for layout of a panel, that in part, requires understanding what the component manufacture specifies. Say for example you have a motor drive to mount, the manufacture will specify the clearances that the controller must have on all sides. Since all device have different requirements it can be a real pain to layout a panel.Things like Terminal blocks and connections to packaged units require some clearance. If you want to make the technicians that will eventually work on the panel happy you need to leave clearance for things like Amp probes or clamp metersI went looking for up to date books and the first thing that came up was this web site:https://www.theautomationstore.com/designing-and-building-electrical-control-panel-lessons/.I'm rather shocked that no references to an actual book came up.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 21, 2020, 03:23:22 pm
content: "Human Factors" is a really big influence on panel design. There are many Google hits, this is one of the early replies:https://www.controldesign.com/articles/2017/the-human-factors-of-panel-layout/You didn't say how many control devices were involved. In the nuclear power business, panel layout was everything. We started with mock ups of the seating and panel locations all made from foam core white board. Then we used computers/projectors to impart an image of some panel layout and brought in the "Human Factors Engineers" and experienced plant operators. We could simulate plant operations without using a single physical device.I assume your project is somewhere in the middle.