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After the wires have been prepared (see our blog post on wire preparation) it’s time to wire the panel, which is one of the most skilled jobs of panel building. Often it’s up to the person carrying out the wiring to decide on the precise routing of the wires and to make sure that wires that need to be segregated – for example, power cables and those carrying low-level signals – are kept apart. And they also have the burden of keeping track of which of the wires have been fitted and connected, and which remain to be tackled.
Wiring control panels is always going to be a skilled job, but there’s a lot that can be done to make it easier. If the panel is designed with EPLAN Pro Panel computer aided engineering (CAE) software, the design engineer can visualise the route of each individual wire in 3D and, therefore, optimise its path to ensure easy installation, to guarantee that trunking capacity is not exceeded, and to ensure proper segregation.
And EPLAN Pro Panel easily and automatically generates drawings that pass all of that information on to the person carrying out the wiring on the shop floor. The drawings show the route, end points, designation, size and colour of every cable, which makes wiring faster and easier, as well as greatly reducing the risk of errors. And fewer errors mean additional time savings when the panel is tested.
Another big benefit is uniformity. When detailed wiring drawings are used, you can be certain that if you produce two or more panels to the same design, the wiring will be identical in each of the panels. That makes life much simpler should the panels ever need modification or maintenance.
For those who use EPLAN Pro Panel with EPLAN Smart Wiring there’s a further important benefit: the wires can be displayed on a laptop or tablet screen on the shop floor, and the progress of the wiring can be recorded in real time on the display. With this extra functionality, it’s virtually impossible for wires to be missed, even if a wiring job started by one person has to be completed by another.
EPLAN Smart Wiring - making wiring simple.
Wiring time makes a big contribution to the cost of producing every control panel. If you’re a panel builder looking for improvements in your bottom line, it’s likely that by now you’ll want to know more about the ways in which a modern CAE system can boost your profitability. So below to download the our white paper for panel builders.
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