Tight on space in panel.How does Cat6 Enet cable and 480 vac play together ?

Rob S.

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Sep 2008
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Good Afternoon,

I'm building a 480 volt control panel with PowerFlex 525 drives . These drives are Ethernet. I have a mixture of Cat 6 cables with 480 vac wires going to the
PowerFlex 525 drives . Panel is getting tight . Do you guys see any major issues with the Cat 6 cables sharing the same wireway with the 480 vac ?

Thanks in advance ,
 
That is not good, I don't think you would have any problems crossing a set of 480 vac lines, but to actually run your ethernet in same raceway as the 480vac lines may be asking for problems. If at all possible I would not do it.
 
I'll wait to hear some response to this as I am also laying out a panel that will have 13 VFDs 460 and controlled by Ethernet. I don't plan on running the cat 6 with the 460 lines
but worry about the switch location in the panel and cable to each drive.
 
For sure not recommended, but if you use STP, FTP, SFTP or SSTP it is not a problem in most of the cases. And more than this PF525's port is 100M, not 1GB, so you can treat it like cat.5.
 
I may be a little rusty - it has been a while - but don't the Powerflex 525's have dual ethernet ports?

Are you daisy chaining these or running an individual cable to each drive?

I would route the 480vac wire in the ducts.

Then, I would bring ethernet in from one spot on the panel with an external connection - hopefully in a 90 degree angle to the 480 ductwork. I would run the ethernet cables completely outside the ductwork and just daisy chain the drives from one to the next (using short cables).

If you have to do them in groups - I would group some together and try to reduce the number of ethernet cables going out of the panel to as few as possible.
 
Like others have said, this is to be avoided. One way that works well is to clip or zip tie them to the outside of the wireway, usually onto the flexible "fingers". Also, use shielded Enet cable where possible.

That said, I've seen it done plenty of times with no issues, so it's not an automatic death sentence. And you have to route the power and ethernet close together by design on the 525s since the port is just above the motor leads so....
 
Maybe I missed something, what is that extra port ? I think it says DS 1.

Drive Serial Interface, "DSI".

Rockwell used RS-485 wiring and mostly-Modbus protocol for the serial bus on the PowerFlex 4-series, instead of the faster but more expensive CAN-based SCANPort (1336 family) or Drive Peripheral Interface (DPI) on the PowerFlex 7-series.

The PowerFlex 525's carried over that interface so that they could replace/integrate with PowerFlex 4-series. It's an RJ45 plug because all industrial designers have an unquenchable desire to confuse people about the purpose of a port with a common kind of plug.

You should not need to touch the DSI connector if you're connecting these drives to an Ethernet network.

I try to keep the Ethernet cables away from 480v both for insulation compatibility reasons and noise reasons. If that means running it down from the top of the enclosure or not tucking it into a wire duct, I do so.
 
So you guys think by just using shielded Ethernet cables I should be good running along side the 480 vac wires ?

Thanks for all your input and help .
 
The A-B Ethernet cable is indeed rated for 600V insulation AND is rated M3 I3 C3 E3 as far as ISOLATION and noise immunity, the highest rating available.
https://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/literature/documents/td/1585-td001_-en-p.pdf

It’s also rated as PLTC (Power Limited Tray Cable) so it can be run in parallel with 480V cables anywhere. A-B uses it inside of their MCCs and doesn’t need a separate wireway like others. I’ve used it ever since I heard about it, I’ve never had issues (other than installer errors with regard to making up my own connectors...).
 
I try to keep the Ethernet cables away from 480v both for insulation compatibility reasons and noise reasons. If that means running it down from the top of the enclosure or not tucking it into a wire duct, I do so.

I am not a fan of sticky back mounting tabs, but I will even stick them to the ceiling and side walls of a beautifully designed brand new panel to avoid running communication cables along side power cables, especially those carrying VFD output signals.
 

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