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Sleepy Wombat

Shoddy workmanship = Sleepy pissed off

29 posts in this topic

The pics below speak to themselves Especially when u get called out to fix a machine with no copy of documented PLC code...No electrical schematics.... Ok.. i am used to that (no supplied doco etc) and can generally reverse engineer things to figure whats going on etc... but what really gets my goat is when some one has'nt got a clue on electrical workmanship and they adpot shoddy practices... ie a screw to help hold in a wire... a pot wored directly to 240V -- if you bump it be prepared for a shock... These practices might work on a farm where an electricaian aint gonna be around for 6 months and u need to keep things goning but in a metro ... the electriacians (or so called) ...... i will not type any more i am too angry and it will get nasty about how i am seeing the industry slowly bening saturated by these backyard boys argh!

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What a mess! I can't believe that screw. Do my eyes deceive me? Are those relays just wire tied together and hanging on the wires? Edited by Alaric

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Yep... Notice the POT.... it had 240VAC on it with bare terminals freely haning in the panel... hence at least know they got some elec tape on them... howd' i know there was 240V... my partner got a shock the the bugger argh! Notice th 24Vdc switch mode power supply tucked in behind the relays and right up against the contactors... the field wiring was just as bad as this...

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I would say something like "Only in OZ", but i've seen similiar and worse in the states as well. Hopefully you can shame them into some cleanup work.

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The pot appears to come from the VSD drive ( electronic card) it would not be unusual for this to appear to have 240 volts to earth if the low voltage side of the drive was not isolated or earthed. Across the pot it is possible that there is only 10 volts. The use of the safety relay does not appear to comply, there isn't a safety monitoring relay controlling it.

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It looks like it may have started out OK. But all the after-thoughts are shockers.

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Is there something called "safety checks" by the Australian government?? If we were to do that and the inspection came out on this........ Not to mention if accidents were to happen...

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At least in the U.S., there are 2 ways this happens. In an industrial plant, the plant is responsible for maintaining the safety of their electrical installations. This occurs where only qualified personnel are allowed to work on the equipment. "Qualified" is a major buzz word...it means that the individual understands the electrical codes, and has either taken a written test demonstrating that knowledge, or works under the direct supervision of someone else who has. In commercial/residential setting, the local government inspects the workmanship. Generally speaking, although there is no way in hell this would have ever passed, the inspection is not very thorough. They look to make sure that you put all the screws in the cabinet and things like that.

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Being an electrician myself, seeing crap like that burns me!!!!! I am very anal on craftmanship and don't care what people say. Do it right or DON"T DO IT! Looks to me like they should have used a bigger enclosure. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

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Our electricians call this 10 pounds of S**T in a 5 pound enclosure. So much for having at least 25% spare space.

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Can't be as bad a pants wetting experience as was this picture you put in the gallery though . Edited by Alaric

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My experience has been that these "safety checks" are reactive, not proactive. In other words, OSHA doesn't open panel doors for inspection unless there's been a report of a serious injury related to an electrical hazard. For this reason, it's pretty common to see panels like this one OR WORSE, still in service. I'll have to share some of the pics i've got :)

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is electrical inspection in Oz voluntary...?

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Love the duct tape.

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I can say that I have seen this sort of practice on many machines. You can blame the person, or persons, responsible, but how much of this can be blamed on management? Coming from an Industrial enviroment, one has to do with what one has. I am not saying that it is acceptable to wire a panel like that, but when you have Management screaming down your neck to get the machine up and running, you do what you can with what you have available. Maybe the person, or persons who wired the panel that way, ment to return and straighten out the wiring. The budget may be another reason. Management stripped the budget to nothing. There is barely enough in the manitenance budget to purchase the necessary cleaning supplies and toiletries to last one month. Have you ever been in a manufacturer who does not have a "Maintenance Department"? I have. The pictures displayed look perty good to what I have seen. At least there is an enclosure and the wiring is somewhat labeled. I do not in any way agree with the above wiring practice. When I see something like this I try and straighten out the wiring and label the wiring if at all possible.

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I guess it could be worse. There is this picture in the gallery that I took in China last year. And then there is this one without any wiring duct.

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In OZ as well ... In an ideal world i wouldn;t mind spending the time to straighten this bit of crap...and hey i am sure that it would look half decent...but only if the client was will to pay for it...BTW I work for my self and among doing automation projects get called out to fix automated equipment..yes i,ve seen worse as well, but this was the most recent... It just took the cake when i say the screw in the contactor... Oh.. heres some field wiring .... the white terminal strip was strapped to the moving head of the machine with cable ties... totally exposed as you can see... the cable markers were a recent addition by another electrician to try an make head or tails of it

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As much as I dislike the Labour Government, I can not blame them for a situation that creates work like this.The electrical inspection system is stiil in place and working fine. This sort of work is usually done after any inspection, most electrical inspectors do not want to look inside the control cabinets as long as the supply to it is wired correctly and has the correct protection. I have found alot of system like this where the equipment has been installed correctly and along come the PLC programmer and adds his little bit. There is a lot of programmers out there that do not have a electrical license or the eqiuipment to do the job correctly. they may know how to program but bluff their way through when it come to installing electrical gear. and in this case do not understand the new safety standards. I have seen alot of panels like this around the world, and have had panel arrive from overseas in not much better condition.Even when you point out to the customer that it is unsafe and does not comply to the local safety standards, they do not care they just want it running.

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Why are you so quick to assume it was a PLC programmer ?BTW welcome to the forum...

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These are from a panel I had to rework in the field with no wiring diagrams. When the cover was removed from the main panel, wires fell out of many of the switches. First 3 are remote operator panel... Love the switch labels? And the ever-so-industrial toggles? And as for the industrial switches, I've never seen any others that required screws through the panel to mount. Any idea what brand that is so I can avoid it in the future? These 2 are the main control panel. Notice such lovelies as the PLC being upside down and the wire nuts. Wire nuts make very professional control panels. 6th one is another remote panel from the other end of the machine. Notice how dirty the switches look? These are from a BRAND NEW cart roller system for a paper mill, and this system cost several thousand dollars.

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Your last post Crossbow cracked me up... I also loved your relay hanging in there with the exposed spade connectors

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Now if you ever have to do a quickie replacement of one of the old fixed IO SLC500 bricks with a Micrologix brick, you may just find yourself mounting the micrologix upside down. Thank you very much AB. Still, there is no excuse for sloppiness like that. I don't get the wirenuts, especially when it appears that there are unused terminals down below. Edited by Alaric

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Its ALLWAYS the programmers fault.

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Its ALLWAYS the programmers fault.

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At the last plant I worked for, it was an uphill battle (to say the least) to get the right number of parts, at a minimally acceptable level of quality, out the door every day. It had been that way for years. This created an atmosphere where only the bare minimum downtime was allowed. Adding to the problem, the machines themselves weren't terribly robust, safe, or designed for maintenance. So when it came time to replace a wire/cordset/etc, the choice would be perhaps 15 minutes or more to pull it all the way home and run a new one, vs. 3-5 minutes to buttsplice or wirenut it right where it broke. Guess which technique had management's support So in time, the emergency-fix technique became standard operating procedure. I think the technicians forgot altogether that this was the wrong way to do things. When I started there, I wondered why everyone had a wirenut and buttsplice fetish. It didn't take long to figure it out. And by no means was this philosophy limited to electrical work. It was the informal corporate philosophy. Mind you, this was a BIG Tier 1 auto supplier, not some mom-n-pop shop. And this is by no means the only place in town making auto parts under those conditions. Funny thing though.. you don't see shops like this making Toyota or Honda parts Edited by gravitar

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