Wire Covers

We have problem with men not putting wire covers back on the wire way inside control panels and things are a mess.

The boss has asked me to send an email on this issue.What are the reasons for putting wire covers back on other than it looks neat and it's the right thing to do.

I would think keep wires from being snagged and pulled loose inadvertently but what else?

Tidyness promotes safety.
Tidyness promotes finishing things completely and not stopping at "good enough".
What if a customer gets a tour of the factory and when a door to a control panel is open it shows a messy inside ?

NEC loop hole that is good for us

Someware in the NEC is a loop hole that says "all work shall be done in a neat workman like mannner" They may have rephrased the word workMAN. But that should cover it.

You mean what would you do about maintenance crew if you control panels looked like this?

Cowboy it's

NEC 110-12

"All work SHALL be done in a neat and workman like manner"

marcinski said:

You mean what would you do about maintenance crew if you control panels looked like this?

Click to expand...

Now that's a mess.

Tim Ganz said:

We have problem with men not putting wire covers back on the wire way inside control panels and things are a mess.

The boss has asked me to send an email on this issue.What are the reasons for putting wire covers back on other than it looks neat and it's the right thing to do.

I would think keep wires from being snagged and pulled loose inadvertently but what else?

Click to expand...

Maybe if you told them that the "Panel Police" will take away their "Strippers" if they do not comply?

i was asked one time to look at a control panel in an injection mold machine.

when i opened the door, all the wires fell out into the floor, all the wire labels were loose due to age and came off,
they flew everywhere, a bundle of #18 wires 3-4 inches in diameter.

i just happened to find the one wire that broke off at the termination and replaced it. the machine worked and as i was putting everything back, the boss walked up.
he wanted to charge for the job, but i stopped him and told him why. he was happy with that.

NOW to the point.
tell your guys this story, this time there are no wire numbers on the wires, production is down,
your company is charged 100k per hour in downtime over 15 minutes, the boss is yelling and in a panic.

yes, i did say $100,000 per hour in downtime past 5 minutes.
automotive supplier.

ALSO, there is an ARC flash potential that exists.
there are several videos of the result to people. they do not pull any punches, its not very nice. one video was cut short because of the result.

regards,
james

"The boss" needs to send this email. And he needs to put in place the system that ensures his instructions will be followed or disciplinary actions will.

Wire covers can be the source of a first impression. Someone who makes a good looking panel can usually be trusted to make a safe, efficient, code-following panel. We use our covers for affixing labels for drives, contactors etc., so that when we have to replace a component, the label doesn't get thrown away with the bad part.

Obviously, wire covers protect the wiring. Not putting them back on just indicates laziness...

There's actually nothing that that guarantees that a neat panel will function... at all. I can after all wire up a panel that looks beautiful, but doesn't work. However, a neatly built and maintained panel will be far safer, easier, and faster ($$) to troubleshoot when a problem arises.


-rpoet

Why are they removing the covers? At my facility, the covers are almost always removed because of poor or non-existent drawings.

There should be no reason to remove duct covers provided the maintenance team has drawings, an ohm meter, every wire is numbered/colored, and that corresponds to the drawings.

If they have those things you may have a training issue. After retraining a couple of times you have a stubbornness issue, which is much harder to be rid of.

If the machine panel is kept neat it should be easier and faster to troubleshoot if done properly. If you go feeling through the wireway you have a real chance of removing a wire from a loose connection or breaking one. And if they are the type to go feeling through the wireway when everything is marked and they have drawings they probably won't be able to fix whatever else they screw up trying to 'fix' the machine.

To make it easier to reinstall the covers when I build a panel with wire duct I place a few rubber-bands on the hooks to keep the wires in place. Works good and costs about 2 bucks

Some equipment has wiring sensitive to EMF, pulses, etc. For example, 110vac control wiring that has fallen out of its place could conceivably get close enough to low voltage signal wires to cause/generate interference. Or, relatedly, there may be wires deliberately run at ninety degrees to others to prevent interference. If they end up more or less parallel and close enough there may be a problem.

Oh, it also looks like ****.

YMMV

Safety safety safety

Once years ago before all this arc flash and PPE, I was tracing out a 480 volt control panel for a machine that had no prints and all covers were off. The machine was running and all I was doing was getting wire numbers off of the devices so I could start building prints. One wire was twisted and number was facing the wrong way, so I turned the wire. BOOM a ground wire with a striped end fell out of the Panduit that had no cover at the top, and swung down in front of me and hit all 3 phases of the main contactor. It was a bread oven and full of bread, and all power to half the plant went out (bad fault coordination). Luckily I just had a bad case of welder’s eye and I was only in bad pain for 8-10 hrs. Lost a lot of bread.