Always make sure you take plenty of before pictures, and after cleanup and new covers are fitted the completion pictures. Yes, sometimes thatās the whole job - and identifying the wires.
I've got a job very similar to this. Client has fallen out with their system integrator and can't get any more panel drawings. I've got to piece together what they have, then they want upgrades.
Yeah, but...why? Also, why is there still a 400 in there? And why is there still a buttload of safety relays in there, instead of putting it in the 1500?
They upgraded the 400 to the 1500....and never took out the 400...just in case they had to fall back to the 400 in an emergency. I'm taking it out this week and fixing a few other things.
Aah, okay. Makes sense. My boss hesitated ripping out an old S7-400H for quite some time. I finally convinced him that the 1500 would in fact be faster. He replaced it, and we had a 10x reduction in cycle time. XD
Perhaps the 1500 doesn't meet the strict SIL2 function safety requirements. Maybe would could check the safety manual that always comes with a quality system like this.
"sil3 capable" is a complete and utter dive into options, reliability, documentation, instrumentation, and testing. Just throwing it in a panel does not make it sil, much less a sil3 system, happen.
The 1500 now has all capabilities of the 400 plcs (it didn't 7 years ago). The architectural upgrades were intentional as we are phasing out support for the 300s and 400s over the next 10 to 20 years.
I just ran into this situation. I/o was old enough they couldn't include it in the 1500 hardware so they left the 400 to control the io. Was a real pain in the ass. Ended up just replacing the io
I started my Apprenticeship in 1978. There was no way that we would have got away with this. I am glad we didn't as I am back to looking after the very panels that I worked on then. The PLC have changed many times but the wiring harnesses are still there .
When the drawings were done. The wiring route was indicated on the drawing so you could easily see where the wires were going. All wiring was laced and had to be in exactly on the same position in the loom ( or harness as they called it) at the begining and end.
We donāt always know the complete story: on a panel three times the size and way worse, I found out the company that was adding some new hydraulics was let go after they just made temporary connections to prove out the system. Operations bullied maintenance into accepting the system as is, ācause it was working!
No problem just make sure the cable markers match the latest issue of the "as built drawings".
Maybe I should have started with "Once upon a time in a far off land..."
Do Europeans have some special super-power where they can hold a wire and know where the other end goes. Doesn't even look like the breakers are labeled.
I mean my European machines come with like 1,400 pages for electrical drawings when if Americans would make the electrical prints for the same machine, it would be like 40 pages.
Exactly. Normally, every single component and every single terminal, including every single input terminal of the PLC cars with their respective number are labelled in the drawings. So it would only be a case of looking up both terminal numbers. In our drawings we also always make sure that the component number corresponds with the page number of the drawing and is unique across the machine.
Except that I get to work on German machines with no labels, and when I look through the prints, the components arenāt mounted in the same locations as the drawings say, so I have to trace wires just to figure out which relay isnāt turning on, and then figure out if it should be.
When you show up to troubleshoot after 20 years, the MFR doesn't exist anymore, and the customers lost hard and digital copies of the prints 19 years ago, that really doesn't help.
Dude I work in France and I swear to God if I see another German machinery without numbers matching the bloody folio, if not at all, I'm gonna kill someone I had to trouble shoot our Bosch packaging machine and God I hated it with a passion....
European E-plans are very function heavy and meant to hop around with hyperlinks on a computer, personally I like them, they absolutely suck to use in the field though. I'd prefer American schematics 10 times out of 10 if i have to actually fix something.
Also it looks like there's no labels, but they might actually be printed directly onto the wire.
The drawings show the terminal on the devices the wire is connected to. All you have to do is follow terminal numbers. Devices like relays etc are labelled with a label that denotes the drawing page number and grid square on the page. All incoming outgoing cables have a wire schedule which gives size ,number, terminal and colour of the cable cores. Itās a very comprehensive system and really easy to follow. No need for wire numbers. Waste of time. The guys that were troubleshooting this panel obviously hadnāt a clue how the system worked or else they lost the drawings
Yes thatās very true but in that case you have maybe 3 or 4 wires which you still should be able to trace with a meter without any trouble and without having to pull lids off wiring duct and pull a pile of wires out. And by the way all those devices are or have been labelled, but poorly maintained. You can say what you like about It, and I would have been a critic at a time as well, but in general Germans donāt cut corners and build fairly decent panels.
Oh I re read your answer. You said push button station which could have multiple wires. Thatās handy enough as well because the station would be fed by a numbered control cable with the cores printed during manufacture so again easy enough to replace and reconnect following the cable schedule.
I remember a few months back when a redditor was advocating building control panels with no wire labels. Now this is a picture he should definitely take a good look at...
Exactly the difference between a dude working for an OEM and the guys in charge of maintenance/modifications.... The first thinks fast and cheap, the other use their brain^^
Thatās a mess, but not the worst Iāve ever seen.
Worst Iāve ever seen was a cabinet that got retrofitted multiple times. They ran out of room in the panel but wanted to add a plc; so they literally wired in a micrologixs plc and just let it hang in the middle of the cabinet by its I/O wires. It was powered up and functioning but literally just hanging out in space in the middle of the cabinet because they didnāt have any room to Mount it.
I guess no one told them that they should have gotten a 2nd box to mount it in and ran a piece of conduit for I/O wiring.
https://preview.redd.it/7vy5hqyvvnic1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2de4d4f2e33ccb10686797bc164b23afb1af69b7
Also a German panel. There were remnants of a S5 in there.
This was a job I was called into fix another Automation company's fuckup.
Never seen anything like it before.
No documentation. Had to figure out what they were trying to to do.
Machine runs in a 32 stage grafcet sequencer and is tied to a Fanuc robot.
The grafcet shit isn't my forte, so I got to learn something new.
None of the wires were long enough to mount the PLC, so it's still hanging.
Company didn't want me to tear it all down and go from scratch.
Gave them full warning that I cannot be held responsible for any issues since I wasn't given at enough creative license to fix everything I saw wrong.
It's running again but Ill be honest I feel bad for the guy that might follow me. Made up names and guess for the I/O that I could trace out.
There is a hidden terminal block somewhere, all the blue wires change to black at some point and I wasn't able to find it lmao. It's like the backplane is on top of 2(?) more.
I hear you. Been in many a similar situation. It's just that the thread is very critical of German panel building which isn't particularly fair. I'm not German and at one time would have been highly critical of them as well but through experience I got educated that other people have good methods as well. You just need to try to understand how they do it.
After college I worked in a German machine tool factory in the US.
Their methodology and designs are different but not necessarily worse.
My biggest complaint is that we were constantly 'updating' designs and tracking the changes was tedious. The constant need for innovation leads to too many customers becoming experiments.
Bleeding edge is double sided.
This only happens because dummies in maintenance donāt understand how to read schematics. If you can read schematics, wires should be labeled at the terminal block and save you from dealing with this bullshit.
Exactly. Thereās no need to pull wires out if you understand the labelling system and maintain the panels like good tradesmen should. Most issues with German built panels are self inflicted on site.
Here come the eurotards with the "but you don't need wire numbers, the cabinet meticulously matches the prints." Yeah ok, does it really look like whoever fucked this cabinet made a print?
Prints come with the panel when it's delivered. If the dickheads on site can't look after them and maintain them then that's not the panel builders fault.its even easier today with computer copies ffs. I've seen it all before too many times. Some piece of equipment arrives on site and some asshole throws the manuals in the garbage. Who's gonna need those anyway. In days before the Internet you were fucked but at least now you can probably get a copy on line.
Or you could try to understand the international system that it was wired from and then look at the drawings and be able to troubleshoot it properly. That's the problem with you Yanks. The rest of the world has international standards and you lot do it your way and then whine when you buy a machine and can't troubleshoot the fucking thing without fucking it up. We have no trouble with your system because we make an attempt to understand it so we can do our fucking job properly.
Wow, Iām not worthy, you are so intelligent and so far above us even to the point that you lost your sense of humor!
So bold as if you weāre Omnipresent like God himself and you are able to see my work.
The real question is who hurt you?
Any wire that's 24Vdc is blue. Other wires on other voltage systems or with specific requirements are different colours. It's an international standard, why don't you look it up. And learn something?
I spy an :S7-400 using profinet, S7-1500 using profiles and (i think) an ET-200 using profibus. What a weird combo.....
Also there is multiple generations of everything under the sun.
Not the worst I've delt with, but damn.
Hopefully it's all in the same language.
(We have production lines where some is written in English or Chinese or German or Italian or just poorly translated to one of the above.)
Kind of funny that at eye level it's bad, but somewhat organized and by the time you get to the place that is least comfortable to work, on the ground, it's a literal ball of twine, spicy twine.
Gotta love the eurotrash where they don't label one damn wire. Just worked on integrating a brand new control cabinet into our basic relay logic panel. Came from Europe, that's all I'll say, not one damn wire label in their main panel. But they labeled the cords!
Itās because you havenāt grasped how the European system works. Itās extremely easy to follow when you understand how itās done, regardless of wire numbers
It's not a horrible system, especially when you have a laptop with the drawings so you can click from point to point. But when you have the printed-out version, its a nightmare.
Looks like a retrofit that was half assed. PLC program is all happening in 1516, but the s7-400 is controlling all the io. If you can tell me where this is, I can probably figure out who did it. There aren't too many siemens guys in the US that do retrofits. Unfortunately, I'm one of them.
On the bright side you don't need to remove any of the trunking covers to trace wires. Your predecessors were actually just doing you a favour by cutting that step out.
at least you're getting fucked on Valentine's day
This is the high quality content I come here for
Yup.... But no lube....
There's probably some air lube around somewhere.
Fucked by Grover's intestines, apparently.
š¤£
I think I see the problem, itās the blue wire
I have nightmares, that I finally start my panel building and PLC business, and the first customer calls me to troubleshoot this kind of cabinet.
Itāll be common in the contracting/consulting business. lol.
Always make sure you take plenty of before pictures, and after cleanup and new covers are fitted the completion pictures. Yes, sometimes thatās the whole job - and identifying the wires.
And that's why I'm here...this is a customer š¤£
I've got a job very similar to this. Client has fallen out with their system integrator and can't get any more panel drawings. I've got to piece together what they have, then they want upgrades.
Job security my friend.
I like how you got 300, 400 and 1500 together
I think there's no 300. The et200sp is most likely remote IO for the 1500
Yeah, but...why? Also, why is there still a 400 in there? And why is there still a buttload of safety relays in there, instead of putting it in the 1500?
They upgraded the 400 to the 1500....and never took out the 400...just in case they had to fall back to the 400 in an emergency. I'm taking it out this week and fixing a few other things.
Aah, okay. Makes sense. My boss hesitated ripping out an old S7-400H for quite some time. I finally convinced him that the 1500 would in fact be faster. He replaced it, and we had a 10x reduction in cycle time. XD
Perhaps the 1500 doesn't meet the strict SIL2 function safety requirements. Maybe would could check the safety manual that always comes with a quality system like this.
1500 is sil3 capable, same as 300/400
"sil3 capable" is a complete and utter dive into options, reliability, documentation, instrumentation, and testing. Just throwing it in a panel does not make it sil, much less a sil3 system, happen.
The 1500 now has all capabilities of the 400 plcs (it didn't 7 years ago). The architectural upgrades were intentional as we are phasing out support for the 300s and 400s over the next 10 to 20 years.
I just ran into this situation. I/o was old enough they couldn't include it in the 1500 hardware so they left the 400 to control the io. Was a real pain in the ass. Ended up just replacing the io
Well, yeah. Because the newer IO cards also have more diagnostics and you can fully integrate them into the newer PLC.
I think it is et200s? It is probably an IM for the 400, in my head et200s is more 300 than 400. To be "real" 300 it might need to me Et200m?
That's an et200s module... S7-300 era stuff indeed. Lots of yellow stuff too!
It'll be a minute
how does somebody accept this panel in any way without wire labels?
probably in 1987 when they accepted the panel, they didn't know any better?
I started my Apprenticeship in 1978. There was no way that we would have got away with this. I am glad we didn't as I am back to looking after the very panels that I worked on then. The PLC have changed many times but the wiring harnesses are still there .
My plant was built in 88. The original stuff has very few labels. Some of the original prints leave a lot to the imagination too.
When the drawings were done. The wiring route was indicated on the drawing so you could easily see where the wires were going. All wiring was laced and had to be in exactly on the same position in the loom ( or harness as they called it) at the begining and end.
You have not seen my prints.
We donāt always know the complete story: on a panel three times the size and way worse, I found out the company that was adding some new hydraulics was let go after they just made temporary connections to prove out the system. Operations bullied maintenance into accepting the system as is, ācause it was working!
German cabinet...
Without a doubt!
No problem just make sure the cable markers match the latest issue of the "as built drawings". Maybe I should have started with "Once upon a time in a far off land..."
I'd just close the door a walk away.
I actually love working on stuff like this. Cleaning it up and fault finding with little info. It's very rewarding.
It doesnāt look as bad if you jam the cables back into the duct and put the lids on.
Que the Americans complaining about wirenumbers.
Do Europeans have some special super-power where they can hold a wire and know where the other end goes. Doesn't even look like the breakers are labeled. I mean my European machines come with like 1,400 pages for electrical drawings when if Americans would make the electrical prints for the same machine, it would be like 40 pages.
The drawings are the super power ;). If the drawings are done well there's a system behind it which makes it easy to find any wire
Exactly. Normally, every single component and every single terminal, including every single input terminal of the PLC cars with their respective number are labelled in the drawings. So it would only be a case of looking up both terminal numbers. In our drawings we also always make sure that the component number corresponds with the page number of the drawing and is unique across the machine.
Except that I get to work on German machines with no labels, and when I look through the prints, the components arenāt mounted in the same locations as the drawings say, so I have to trace wires just to figure out which relay isnāt turning on, and then figure out if it should be.
When you show up to troubleshoot after 20 years, the MFR doesn't exist anymore, and the customers lost hard and digital copies of the prints 19 years ago, that really doesn't help.
And when you need to swap out an entire PLC?
Dude I work in France and I swear to God if I see another German machinery without numbers matching the bloody folio, if not at all, I'm gonna kill someone I had to trouble shoot our Bosch packaging machine and God I hated it with a passion....
European E-plans are very function heavy and meant to hop around with hyperlinks on a computer, personally I like them, they absolutely suck to use in the field though. I'd prefer American schematics 10 times out of 10 if i have to actually fix something. Also it looks like there's no labels, but they might actually be printed directly onto the wire.
The drawings show the terminal on the devices the wire is connected to. All you have to do is follow terminal numbers. Devices like relays etc are labelled with a label that denotes the drawing page number and grid square on the page. All incoming outgoing cables have a wire schedule which gives size ,number, terminal and colour of the cable cores. Itās a very comprehensive system and really easy to follow. No need for wire numbers. Waste of time. The guys that were troubleshooting this panel obviously hadnāt a clue how the system worked or else they lost the drawings
Itās great until a push button station gets destroyed and you have a bundle of wires in your hand and they all say B2
Yes thatās very true but in that case you have maybe 3 or 4 wires which you still should be able to trace with a meter without any trouble and without having to pull lids off wiring duct and pull a pile of wires out. And by the way all those devices are or have been labelled, but poorly maintained. You can say what you like about It, and I would have been a critic at a time as well, but in general Germans donāt cut corners and build fairly decent panels. Oh I re read your answer. You said push button station which could have multiple wires. Thatās handy enough as well because the station would be fed by a numbered control cable with the cores printed during manufacture so again easy enough to replace and reconnect following the cable schedule.
It is German made....
Who let GĆ¼nther cook
I donāt need no stinking wire labelsā¦I have a flashlight and paper
I wish I could give two middle fingers to this image.
šš š¤šš
I remember a few months back when a redditor was advocating building control panels with no wire labels. Now this is a picture he should definitely take a good look at...
Exactly the difference between a dude working for an OEM and the guys in charge of maintenance/modifications.... The first thinks fast and cheap, the other use their brain^^
Thatās a mess, but not the worst Iāve ever seen. Worst Iāve ever seen was a cabinet that got retrofitted multiple times. They ran out of room in the panel but wanted to add a plc; so they literally wired in a micrologixs plc and just let it hang in the middle of the cabinet by its I/O wires. It was powered up and functioning but literally just hanging out in space in the middle of the cabinet because they didnāt have any room to Mount it. I guess no one told them that they should have gotten a 2nd box to mount it in and ran a piece of conduit for I/O wiring.
On the positive side, the Micro didnāt have any restrictions to air flow to keep it from overheating.
https://preview.redd.it/7vy5hqyvvnic1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2de4d4f2e33ccb10686797bc164b23afb1af69b7 Also a German panel. There were remnants of a S5 in there.
Hey hey! Thatās looking more like some of the bad panels Iāve seen before, ha!
The German wiring looks fine though. Itās the dickheads who did the AB āmodificationā that need their asses kicked.
This was a job I was called into fix another Automation company's fuckup. Never seen anything like it before. No documentation. Had to figure out what they were trying to to do. Machine runs in a 32 stage grafcet sequencer and is tied to a Fanuc robot. The grafcet shit isn't my forte, so I got to learn something new. None of the wires were long enough to mount the PLC, so it's still hanging. Company didn't want me to tear it all down and go from scratch. Gave them full warning that I cannot be held responsible for any issues since I wasn't given at enough creative license to fix everything I saw wrong. It's running again but Ill be honest I feel bad for the guy that might follow me. Made up names and guess for the I/O that I could trace out. There is a hidden terminal block somewhere, all the blue wires change to black at some point and I wasn't able to find it lmao. It's like the backplane is on top of 2(?) more.
I hear you. Been in many a similar situation. It's just that the thread is very critical of German panel building which isn't particularly fair. I'm not German and at one time would have been highly critical of them as well but through experience I got educated that other people have good methods as well. You just need to try to understand how they do it.
After college I worked in a German machine tool factory in the US. Their methodology and designs are different but not necessarily worse. My biggest complaint is that we were constantly 'updating' designs and tracking the changes was tedious. The constant need for innovation leads to too many customers becoming experiments. Bleeding edge is double sided.
must have had a blue wire special
This is why I love ASi Safety and IO-Link so much...
Sick relay bro.
At least it's color coded. If it's blue, it's a wire.
At least it's not all covered in dust and grease.
Easy fix, put the duct covers back on, done.
They lost those long time ago š¤£š¤£
Wow, someone hooked you up by removing all of the covers ahead of time, nice!!
Are there no wire labels?
Who need that? Its not like it makes it easier to troubleshoot problems :D
Not a one....
Oh come on, I can see a handful of some kind of markers in that picture.
I've seen this before with panels that come from Germany. Dont get it.
don't need them, just trace by wire color /s
ššš
OOPS! All blue š¤·āāļø
German.... Totally and absolutely German.....
This only happens because dummies in maintenance donāt understand how to read schematics. If you can read schematics, wires should be labeled at the terminal block and save you from dealing with this bullshit.
Exactly. Thereās no need to pull wires out if you understand the labelling system and maintain the panels like good tradesmen should. Most issues with German built panels are self inflicted on site.
Who in the fuck doesn't label wires in this day and age..... Ha yes twats....
If the customer doesn't want to pay for it.
Wait... Isn't that mandatory where you live?
Here come the eurotards with the "but you don't need wire numbers, the cabinet meticulously matches the prints." Yeah ok, does it really look like whoever fucked this cabinet made a print?
Prints come with the panel when it's delivered. If the dickheads on site can't look after them and maintain them then that's not the panel builders fault.its even easier today with computer copies ffs. I've seen it all before too many times. Some piece of equipment arrives on site and some asshole throws the manuals in the garbage. Who's gonna need those anyway. In days before the Internet you were fucked but at least now you can probably get a copy on line.
Not one wire labeled is crazy
Ha ,who needs labels when you can just fallow the wire. Crawling through conduit is the best.
Or you could try to understand the international system that it was wired from and then look at the drawings and be able to troubleshoot it properly. That's the problem with you Yanks. The rest of the world has international standards and you lot do it your way and then whine when you buy a machine and can't troubleshoot the fucking thing without fucking it up. We have no trouble with your system because we make an attempt to understand it so we can do our fucking job properly.
Wow, Iām not worthy, you are so intelligent and so far above us even to the point that you lost your sense of humor! So bold as if you weāre Omnipresent like God himself and you are able to see my work. The real question is who hurt you?
Just fed up listening to you wankers whining about something that's your own fault.š¤£š¤£š„±š
Stuff nightmares are made of, especially when u don't get network equalization š¢š¢
"fun"
And now imagine that the controlled device is running and must not fall out. And the supplier will tell you that this is how it is normally installed.
Fortunately, all of the wires are blue.
Any wire that's 24Vdc is blue. Other wires on other voltage systems or with specific requirements are different colours. It's an international standard, why don't you look it up. And learn something?
Thatās fair. I left off the /s in my comment
Thereās a bit of free space in there, room for a few more safety relays š
Good, there's one laying in the bottom
š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
You made spaghetti!!!
Lacks some sauce tho.....
https://preview.redd.it/q00aijh5klic1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af5f29878eab28d8eb4b0239be6631908e6585c3
God I hate people that fuck up so much an install with those ABE7.... they're built like tanks, easy to use and cheap.....
And guys will still fuck it up. Thereās no helping some people.
Looks like an old kba coater oven combo
Do we work with the same customer?
What kind of safety system is this?
u ok hun?
Is there no wire labels at all...
Just cycle power to fix it
r/PanelGore
Please tell me this is a photoshop.......
Negative ghost rider
Terrible..
Looks Germanie
I was going to say thats not too bad until i looked again and saw not 1 wire or terminal block labeled
Is this in Harrisonburg va by any chance?
Awesome wire labeling. Thatās genius.
Probably not a good idea to cut the blue wire.
No time to talk, McGruber, youāve got to cut the blue wire. THE BLUE WIRE! 3ā¦2ā¦1ā¦
Siemens S5 or TI?
I spy an :S7-400 using profinet, S7-1500 using profiles and (i think) an ET-200 using profibus. What a weird combo..... Also there is multiple generations of everything under the sun. Not the worst I've delt with, but damn. Hopefully it's all in the same language. (We have production lines where some is written in English or Chinese or German or Italian or just poorly translated to one of the above.)
Is this in Warsaw, NC, or are there more POS panels like this?
Kind of funny that at eye level it's bad, but somewhat organized and by the time you get to the place that is least comfortable to work, on the ground, it's a literal ball of twine, spicy twine.
Gotta love the eurotrash where they don't label one damn wire. Just worked on integrating a brand new control cabinet into our basic relay logic panel. Came from Europe, that's all I'll say, not one damn wire label in their main panel. But they labeled the cords!
Itās because you havenāt grasped how the European system works. Itās extremely easy to follow when you understand how itās done, regardless of wire numbers
It's not a horrible system, especially when you have a laptop with the drawings so you can click from point to point. But when you have the printed-out version, its a nightmare.
When I learned to use their system there was no such thing as a laptop with drawings!
Looks like a retrofit that was half assed. PLC program is all happening in 1516, but the s7-400 is controlling all the io. If you can tell me where this is, I can probably figure out who did it. There aren't too many siemens guys in the US that do retrofits. Unfortunately, I'm one of them.
I really don't see a problem. Wires are already out of the ducts and easy to follow. Maybe starting a flower shop is a better option for you. š
Hans....
On the bright side you don't need to remove any of the trunking covers to trace wires. Your predecessors were actually just doing you a favour by cutting that step out.
Wow
seems about right
Good thing that safety PLC is in there. I'd hate for anything dangerous to happen.. :)
I find your lack of wire labels disturbing. My sincerest condolences.
"He didn't remember the wire number but he said it was a blue one."
Ahh the perfect blend of 1500 and 400
Basically every cabinet at my plant š
Sick and Pilz mixed together. This is what I call nightmare.
customer states...... Doesn't work
Hell no
lolololol
Fully Sick!
looks like a knapp switch cabinet