Panel Designing

Control panel design starts with the basics, and it's not just about selecting a cabinet and back panel to house your electrical control hardware. It's about creating a design to control a machine or process. To do that, hardware must be purchased and mounted on a back panel and then wired and integrated into the machine. None of this or the testing that follows can be accurately completed without the drawings. Where are the drawings? Control panel design creates the drawings.

The automation cannot be brought to life and properly maintained for years without a proper control panel design. The design could be a sketch or created using graphical software to get the lines on paper, but preferably CAD or electrical CAD is used to create it. It should also follow standards such as found in the NFPA 79: Electrical Standard for Industrial Machinery, among others. Get a copy; read it; then continue here.

Every control system needs a control panel design, and that includes drawings—the electrical schematic. Building and wiring a panel without the design represented in a schematic is like mopping the floor without sweeping first; when complete, it's just a bad job. Drawings are always required, just as installing wire numbers, on all wiring in an industrial automation control panel, is always required.