Control Panel Hygiene

Grahamryan

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Join Date
Dec 2019
Location
Dunkirk NY
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I am very neurotic about control cabinet cleanliness. Unfortunately i have to convince my employer I nee to remove all of the precious spare parts from them. Is there an OSHA or any other regulatory body for me to use?đź“š
 
Umm, while I support your enthusiasm and intent you may want to find a support group. There’s many fine ones out there. ����

Seriously, do you mean “Germy” hygiene or neatness hygiene?
 
Welcome to the forum.

by precious spare parts, do you mean the spare plc i/o, terminals, and so on?
if so, you will be losing the battle. almost all companies require a percentage of spare i/o and terminals. something ALWAYS comes up and has to be added.
regards,
james
 
Welcome to the forum.

by precious spare parts, do you mean the spare plc i/o, terminals, and so on?
if so, you will be losing the battle. almost all companies require a percentage of spare i/o and terminals. something ALWAYS comes up and has to be added.
regards,
james

James: I believe what is meant is that spare replacement parts are kept in the cabinet.
I got our company to stop storing spares in the cabinets by explaining the extra money being spent by having redundant components in the enclosures rather than in central crib. We also had problems with added downtime because not all employees knew what components were stored where.
Keep fighting the good fight. I cannot stand a messy enclosure. A neat, uncluttered enclosure can be much easier to troubleshoot and keep running.
 
I can identify with you as I hate a messy panel and it drives me nuts. That being said as far as old components if it's no longer used and won't be used in the future the devices other than terminals and spare I/O should be removed and the drawings update in most cases IMHO.

As far as spare I/O I try to leave at least 1 point free on each module if possible but do go ahead and wire it to the terminal block. As far as spare terminals and wires it's important to have those as they have saved my bacon more than once.

I like to label spare wires and put a heat shrink cap on them and hide them neatly in the wire duct and on most panels we build we use the type with the false bottom so spare wires can be coiled and stored there. I try to pull a spare in most conduit runs of any respectable distance or complexity as they will come in handy sometimes even if just used for a pull wire to bring in many more conductors later for repairs and upgrades.

When I have served as a maintenance manager or engineering roles I always had panel PM's that we did to make sure drawings were in the panel and up to date and duct covers were on and things were clean, filters changed and heating-cooling devices serviced, and maintained, LOTO procedures posted and up to date, VFD fans cleaned, Lighting working, etc.

A clean, organized, and maintained control panel makes life much easier when troubleshooting problems
 
I've seen this issue in virtually every plant I've worked in (30+ years). Most managers don't give a rat's a** about this so don't even bother going that route. Health and safety is an avenue but again, actions are usually reactive not proactive. When critical or repeatedly replaced parts are needed lineside, I've had lockable cabinets installed. The easiest and most effective way to deal with this is to simply toss them.
 
The only place I've seen this was one specific panel where an S7-400 was housed and wasn't powered down for years on end. Every time they powered it down, the PSU wouldn't come back up and had to be changed. It was the only 400 rack in the ship and that machine was fairly precious to them so it had that PSU on the door.

Other than that, if it's not doing a function, it shouldn't be there. There's also the issue of availability of stock and waste of money for whoever manages stock and the very, very likely risk of downtime from not knowing where parts are or assuming they're there but have been used and not replenished.

This being said, the only other part that I've experienced consistent failure to the point I started testing by pulling a spare from the warehouse were Hirschmann switches. Without fail one of the fiber ports would die when we powered the panel down and brought it back up. So can't see why you'd keep spares in an electrical panel...
 
I'm not aware of any regulations specific to not storing spare parts inside of a control panel. But there are some issues in that I believe you cannot store any COMBUSTIBLE materials in a panel, which would eliminate any cardboard boxes for the spare parts.

Often times the "extra room" in the bottom of a panel is there for required wire bending space. Storing things in that space would be a violation.

The other aspect is going to pertain to ACCESS to the spare parts and NFPA 70E. If you have spares inside that are needed for this one control panel, that's fine because ostensibly you would be shutting it down to facilitate the replacement. But if the spare parts inside are needed for something else, the person retrieving them from inside of a control panel that is still in use is going to have to shut it down to open the door, or go though the "energized work permit" process. Having your spares in a centralized location is going to make them more available for wherever they are needed.

Lastly, some parts must be kept track of from an aging perspective, especially anything that might have electrolytic capacitors in them, like power supplies etc. Keeping them locked up and never looked at for years might result in the spares being useless when needed.
 
Umm, while I support your enthusiasm and intent you may want to find a support group. There’s many fine ones out there. ����


That support group is called EVERYONE and it meets at the bar every night.


As far as spare parts in the cabinet, if the part is unique to that control panel, or there are spares in every panel, and depending on the size of the shop, that is frequently done, as long as it's maintenance department spare parts and nothing the operator opens the control panel for his use. In one panel I found boxes of gloves, masks and hand towels.
 
I'm not aware of any regulations specific to not storing spare parts inside of a control panel. But there are some issues in that I believe you cannot store any COMBUSTIBLE materials in a panel, which would eliminate any cardboard boxes for the spare parts.

This is a great point... how many of you have panel drawings in the panel itself?
 
Yes, drawings galore, usually stained and torn, and tie wraps (and bits of tie wraps), trunking lids, spare fuses, sometimes spare parts and even discarded tools.

When I first came to the factory 9 years ago, I had to do a PLC Install Base inventory - good way to find out where everything was - and I built up a good stock of "useful" bits and pieces from panels, plus a lot of stuff that I threw out at the time.
Trying to get all trunking lids back on was an impossible task though.
 

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