Panel safety and design.

For the States, I have been looking into the NEC2014, NFPA 70E, and NFPA79. I have a weakness in electrical design but have done well in programming large control systems. Any advice would be appreciated. I have been replicating existing electrical designs for too long and need to stop using copy and paste as a crutch.

You could add UL508A to that list.

Overall functional safety you should look at IEC 61508 and related standards.

Cut and paste can be good in the sense you get tried and true but it usually leaves out a lot of the latest design innovations.

I am in a similar boat.

I've been looking for a guidebook that pares down the NEC to just the sections relevant to machine building, but so far I haven't found anything.

Angry Robot said:

I've been looking for a guidebook that pares down the NEC to just the sections relevant to machine building, but so far I haven't found anything.

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NFPA 79 is essentially just that.

Timbert said:

NFPA 79 is essentially just that.

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Agreed. Years ago there were other industrial standards such as JIC (Joint Industrues Council) and NMTBA (National Machine Tool Builders Association), they were all absorbed into what became NFPA 79 so that they were harmonized. The NEC (NFPA 70) is really more about installation of all electrical equipment, UL 508a is more about safe generalized control panel construction regardless of use, but NFPA 79 is specific to industrial machinery controls.

At my former job before they moved and eliminated my position, we did the following.

480 / 240 volt controls in one panel.
interface relays if required in a 2nd panel
120 ac / 24 vdc in a 3rd panel, we kept the 24 volt and 120 separate as best we could.
we used finger safe terminals, and had shields over the exposed 240/480 power distribution block.

To be completely in compliance, you must have an energy survey done of the panel to determine the calorie / ppe requirements of the panel in case of an arc flash. I'm not sure if I said that correctly, but every panel in the plant where I am now is marked as cat 2 or 4.

james