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!

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.

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.

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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