However, in reality customers expect to pay less for their panels because of the increased level of business they are placing, but more business doesn’t necessarily translate into savings for the panel builder. In fact, it often makes building panels profitably a more difficult challenge, especially as your costs as a panel builder are more likely to have gone up than down. The only solution is to streamline your design and manufacturing processes to increase efficiency. In this blog post, we’ll be looking at some of the ways you can do that.
Preparing the cabinet and mounting plates
Metalworking operations in the panel building sector, such as drilling mounting plates and making cut-outs in cabinets, have traditionally been carried out manually, using hand tools. For low-volume production, this approach can still be effective, but even then, the use of a CAE design system offers substantial benefits, as virtual assistants are available which highlights all required wiring information which provides step-by-step instructions in a digital format – including 3D – to assist wiring technicians with easy implementation, ensuring that enclosures are standardised and to a high standard.
Even bigger benefits accrue from embracing automation. Machines are now available that will take data directly from the CAE system and use it to drill or make cut-outs in any type of sheet metalwork such as an enclosure door or mounting plate. Accuracy is guaranteed, and the time savings are substantial. Machines in the Rittal Perforex range for example, interface directly with EPLAN software boosting productivity and efficiency.
Trunking and mounting rails
When it comes to trunking and mounting rails, inefficient and inaccurate cutting not only leads to needless production delays but also wastes materials. Automation can readily address these problems. The first part of the solution is a modern CAE package that will calculate the exact length of every piece of trunking and mounting rail used in the panels you’re making. The second part is to use an automated cutting centre.
This will take cutting data directly from the CAE package and automatically set the stop for each piece of trunking or mounting rail that needs to be cut. All the operator has to do is to push the trunking or rail up to the stop and press a button to initiate the cutting operation. It takes only a second or two, so it’s much quicker than manual cutting.
That being said, few tasks in panel building are as tedious as assembling terminal rails. However, there is an excellent alternative: let the terminal supplier build your terminal rails for you. Once again, the key is a modern CAE system that will generate data you can send to the terminal supplier who will then build your terminal rail assemblies at very competitive prices and on very short delivery times.
Wiring the control panel
One of the most complicated and time-consuming jobs in control panel manufacture is wiring, so how can you improve the times for that? The answer lies with – you’ve guessed it – a good CAE system. First of all, a 3D design package will make it easy for the design engineers to preview all of the wiring runs within the panel via the Digital Twin technology, to decide on the best routes that will provide optimum segregation between, for example, power and signal cables.
The package will also calculate the exact length of each wire, and generate the information needed to produce cable markers. If required, it will also produce a point-to-point wiring diagram that includes the size, insulation type, colour and type of every cable in the panel. This greatly speeds the wiring process and reduces the risk of mistakes.
Further, wiring information from the digital twin can be directly exported to automated wire processing machines from Rittal to deliver an eight-fold acceleration in wiring processing speed. Depending on the variant, the new, compact Wire Terminal WT fully automated wire assembly machines can produce up to 24 or 36 different wires in cross-sections ranging from 0.5 mm² to 2.5 mm² fully automatically, with zero manual intervention.
Testing the control panel
It is safe to say that keeping the time spent on testing to a minimum is a high priority for all panel builders. To achieve this, the first requirement is a good design, perhaps one that borrows elements from earlier designs that have been shown to work correctly and efficiently. The next step is creating accurate documentation for the shop floor, so that the errors are minimised during the building and wiring stages. Good wiring information is particularly important, as a typical control panel will have tens or even hundreds of wires and connections – and one wire incorrectly connected or missing can take a long time to find on test.
Accurate documentation for testing is also needed. This is not necessarily the same as the documentation used to build the control panel, as modifications may have been necessary during the build process and it’s essential that these are reflected in the drawings and documents used for testing.
The advanced features of modern CAE packages help in all of these respects. They support right-first-time designs and help produce impeccable documentation, which is an enormous benefit at the testing stage and has the potential to significantly reduce the overall time to market.
Yet for many panel builders getting started with CAE systems may seem like a daunting task. To come to their aid, EPLAN and Rittal have put together and informative white paper which goes through all of the benefits they can expect from a such a package. You can download it free of charge here:
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