Come With Me and You Will See...

Good morning Automation Fans! Come with me as we embark on our Journey-of- Discovery... venture into the Meandering Wire jungle, pass the 480VAC quicksand, through the MCC & VFD ruins (plundered by wire pirates over and over again through the ages), navigate the treacherous HB River, cross the dizzying heights of the Unlabeled-Wire Mountains and finally reach the golden plains of Properly Wired VFDs...Hurray!

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A proper "Journey-of-Discovery" starts with a map. So we fetched our cartography tools (a toner/probe and a multimeter) and started documenting IO and control wire terminations from the Main panel to the MCC and the VFD for each of the 6 pumps. This was a more time intensive undertaking that we had anticipated since each one of the MCC/VFDs were wired differently. Dang wire pirates. Once we mapped out the correct wires we began rewiring each pump's MCC & VFD to properly operate in HAND before we replace the control panel in a few weeks. The reason for this is because this section of the plant is critical for all the downstream processes and needs to continually operate while we preform the control upgrades. On our first trip we completed 4 of the 6 rewires then returned the following week to finish the last 2. Each pump HOA switch was tested, with varying levels of success, once we completed the rewire. So now that all the pumps are able to operate in HAND we will be able to remove the old control panel (when the time comes) without interfering in the critical operations of the plant.

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Lets take a peek at the current control panel. Not the best looking panel we have seen but it could always be worse. The plan is to pull the old equipment out, leave the backplane in, set in the new control panel backplane and attach it to the original backplane. Below, we have the upgraded panel currently finishing up QC testing.

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As you can see, it'll be a lot cleaner and easier to maintain in the future. Especially, with the PROPER documentation and drawings that will be provided once we are finished. We also had to accommodate the customer's newly purchased UPS so that is what that metal shelf is for. Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

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Good morning automation fans! We are back from our rewiring/installation odyssey of the control panel above, and I come bearing gifts from far away lands.

Last week we set out to complete the task of upgrading the control hardware and rewire of the pump VFDs and MCCs, and I am happy to announce that we were successful. As previously mentioned, we removed all the old hardware from the backplane (see Picture 4) and carefully positioned the new control panel into place and secured it to the original backplane with large self-tapping screws.

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Once the panel was installed, we began to terminate all the instrument wires/cables that we had identified and labeled on our "Journey-of- Discovery". Then we moved over to the VFDs to install indicator lights and complete the rewire to make them ALL the same (everyone of the VFDs were wired different). During this startup, a minimum of 2 pumps had to be running at all times so the flow stayed close to a certain setpoint. So we had to complete one and swap pumps to move on to the next. The previous control panel used 120VAC signals to and from each VFD but now we switched it all over to 24VDC. The only item that did not work out for us as originally designed was the fiber patch panel we had in the upper right corner of our new control panel, it stuck out just a bit too far and prohibited the door from fully closing. I removed it to reposition the DIN rail mounts and that will be reinstalled at a later date, it is not a mission critical device at this time. There was also a monitoring panel that sent flow information to a "third-party" for billing info that had to be looped into our new panel. This ended up being a little bit more of a challenge but we took care of it. Then came the "fun" part, cleaning up the wires and cables in each VFD and the remaining MCCs.

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As you can see, they look a lot better than before. They also now have all the same indicator lights but labels still need to be made and applied to each door. All pumps are running in software manual mode currently. The testing for running all in AUTO will be done remotely, with help from our "Inside-women", HB. They have a scheduled shutdown next week so we will be running testing simulations to work out any issues before taking it 'Live'. Stay tuned for final updates once everything is running smoothly in AUTO mode.

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