OT We don't need no steenking wire numbers

I will try not to rant, and I genuinely want to understand this.

Why do all machines sourced from continental Europe not have wire numbers for the wires in the panel?
Whenever we order something, we have to specifically specify that each wire is to be numbered. This always result in a huge amount of grumbling, arguments, extra costs, and it always turns out wrong.

Without wire numbers, how do you efficiently commission and trouble shoot your system?

Machines sourced locally (Australia), from near by countries, US or Britain all seem to just number all their wires.

So why not Europe?

How do you actually get your machines to run?

What's the secret?

Maybe because it is the one thing that is not funded by the government?

Well... to begin with, we do label the wires on our machines. And this is probably the most time-consuming part of any wiring job - which is not a surprise.

I don't know what kind of answer would our European colleagues come up with, but I have some experience maintaining some German machines - there are no wire numbers, as you stated. However, there is always an exact match between the scematics and the actual wiring regarding on which point of which terminal of which device each wire starts and where exactly it is going to - once again, down to the particular terminal on a particular device. If a drawing says that this wire starts at terminal block X11, terminal 12, point 3 - you can be certain it starts there and only there, even if there are 20 more terminals in X11, all bridged together. For +DC bus, for example. With our traditional wire labeling system, each and every wire starting at that terminal block would have the same number (since it is the same potential point). Not so in Europe.

What also helps is widespread usage of CE-style cables with numbered, instead of color-coded, wires. Each cable is labeled and then the wires are connected in exact compliance with the schematics.

It is a different system but it makes sense, very accurate and saves a lot of time. On the other hand, if you are trying to trace the wiring without the schematics... well, it is no fun even when the traditional wire-labeling system is used, isn't it?

LadderLogic said:

....there is always an exact match between the scematics and the actual wiring regarding on which point of which terminal of which device each wire starts and where exactly it is going to - once again, down to the particular terminal on a particular device....

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Exactly. I work with both European and American machines, and I would much rather trace wires on a European machine. It is just so much quicker to find and trace the terminal numbers than to paw through wire bundles looking for a certain wire. The only requirement is that the prints are updated when changes are made, but people should be doing that anyway.

RussB said:

Maybe because it is the one thing that is not funded by the government?

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Very good.

We have French, Italian, & German equipment in our plant. The French wires are all numbered. The Italian and the german are not. Why? Who knows. The german and italian are pretty straight foward to troubleshoot so there is not much of an issue.

One thing I have learned though...All germans in our industry must be about 3'6" and have small hands. I hate working on their equipment, I cant figure out how they did half the stuff they have.

The other thing I absolutely hate about a lot of the stuff from Europe is the pain in the a*** single line control circuit drawings spread across 60 or so A4 pages! Spend days running backwards and forwards all over the A4 pages tracing references to other pages and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. The fact that they are usually in French or German is also of great assistance!

All my power, control circuit and PLC drawings are on A1 sheets from a plotter. I always do my power drawings with all 4 power lines so it is easy to track which phase feeds which circuit breaker. PLC drawings have inputs in from the left and outputs out to the right. Makes it simple to fault find.

just_lionel said:

We have French, Italian, & German equipment in our plant. The French wires are all numbered. The Italian and the german are not. Why? Who knows.

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I know. Because the idiot, who signed the contract, wanted to save few bucks.

just_lionel said:

One thing I have learned though...All germans in our industry must be about 3'6" and have small hands. I hate working on their equipment, I cant figure out how they did half the stuff they have.

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Customers (read: your bosses) don't want to have a separate control cabinets anymore. So we (machinery builders) have to pack it more and more.

BobB said:

The other thing I absolutely hate about a lot of the stuff from Europe is the pain in the a*** single line control circuit drawings spread across 60 or so A4 pages

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With some of experience it's not so complicated as you think.

BobB said:

The fact that they are usually in French or German is also of great assistance!

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Another idiot saved some money. Blame him.

BobB said:

All my power, control circuit and PLC drawings are on A1 sheets from a plotter

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Impressive. Try A0 it's even bigger.

BobB said:

PLC drawings have inputs in from the left and outputs out to the right. Makes it simple to fault find

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Turn our (european) drawings 90 deg clockwise and you are done.

jacekd said:

With some of experience it's not so complicated as you think.



Another idiot saved some money. Blame him.



Impressive. Try A0 it's even bigger.



Turn our (european) drawings 90 deg clockwise and you are done.

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lol funny / painful

Doug

Add to what LadderLogic said I have seen the Germans mount these (WWII era) on slate boards in an open back cabinet, all the wires are neatly run side by side and fastened in place drill thru to the front, so in addition to the prints which are very easy to follow from point to point this works. My biggest gripe is how the Swiss pack controls in a 12"x12" cabinet that needs to be 24"x24" not to mention they mount them about 6" off the floor on the machine so you have to stand on your head to work on them, prints are not bad though.

Leon

Leon said:

I have seen the Germans mount these (WWII era) on slate boards

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Slate... How about marble? Seriously, I have happended to see really old stuff mounted on marble boards, WWI (that is "one") vintage...

jacekd said:

Impressive. Try A0 it's even bigger.

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This is good stuff!!!

2 thumbs up for jacekd

Real electricians dont label wire. Sorry couldn't resist.

This brings up an idea of something I always wanted. Wire numbers on ends of wires are fine, but wouldn't it be much better if the number repeated itself the whole length of the wire. If you grab a whole bundle of wires there would be no need to trace any of them to the end and find the wire number.

So why hasn't anyone come up with a hand held machine that will let you type in a number/description, then thread a wire through a whole in one side, pull it out the other side and in the process the wire gets the number printed directly onto it every inch or so.
It seems to me with the popularity of ink jet technology, this could be easily done.

I know you can buy cables with each wire numbered individually, but that only makes the wire uniquely labeled within the cable.

Think of the possibilities of haveing almost no character count restriction. I would create labels such as "Wire #100 goes to Output O:1/0 and feeds the valve close solenoid".


Am I the only one that thinks this would be a good idea?

Thanks to everyone who replied, I now have a better understanding of the problem.
I will still have to wrestle with our specifications to allow some of our suppliers to understand the concept of wire numbering.

LadderLogic and S7guy:
I agree that it is not a bad system if everything is wired perfectly, however we have found that is not always the case. Trouble shooting in that case seems to take far longer. Also, updating and controlling the copies of drawings does not always work as well as advertised.

Archie:
I have given a little bit of thought (not much) to this type of thing. It would be good to get something like this up and running.
I can also use this post as a "prior art" or evidence of "obviousness" should any bugger try to patent this idea out from under us.