White vs Gray Wire Duct

Trains, corners, shiny objects, cats... just where IS this going?

Apparently paint shopping with the wife or I guess it could lead to the humane society to pick up a gray coloured cat.

Grey and Narrow - defo..

I do not like the stuff where it becomes almost impossible to remove the lid to make wiring additions.
I was working on one panel from a German supplier and I had to add the telemetry wires up the length of the panel. In trying to remove the trunking lid, I tripped an MCB that was thoughtfully placed next to the vertical run (MCB01), and what did it do? It shut down the PLC and the HMI for the system...
Oops.....powered it back up and think all was ok....

But you go back to panels weeks later, once they have been running for a while, and trunking lids are stacked to the side or lying on the base as the techs have been "fault-finding"....

OK, a little different, but let me throw this into the mix as well. Cablofil wire basket cable management. sure you can't cut it with a stanley knife, and it is a little more demanding to fasten down, but it has a myriad of configurations and sizes (just like plastic), but it is metal (durable) plated (not dirty fingerprints) and is wide open, easy to fasten either large or small conductors neatly in your style of bundle, and makes it easy to make a neat installation. Found this stuff when we purchased our first Triconex integrated PLC cabinet, and now we use it for every panel we build. And you don't have to worry about fingers!

<https://www.legrand.us/cablofil.aspx>

I would post a picture of one of our panels, but the site's attachment tools aren't playing nice with my laptop!

JohnCalderwood said:

I do not like the stuff where it becomes almost impossible to remove the lid to make wiring additions.

Click to expand...

+1

Not only are these hard to open, but it allows the panel builder to stuff the wire duct 110% because the lid wont pop off.
The type where the lid is easily removable forces the panel builder to use a properly sized wire duct !

Can we all just agree that the people who use the wire duct where the fingers are all connected at the top should me beaten with a short piece of very high strand count 500MCM? Nothing worse than having to unhook one end of the wire to remove it from the wireduct.


I can understand it a little more when its the shielded duct, but even then I'd much rather deal with a larger cabinet than having to deal with that pain.

My preference is for grey with narrow fingers (the easier to break off), but when I was building my testing lab the only covers my supplier had in stock for the 2x2 wireway was white, so my lab has a pretty stylish 2-tone scheme going on.

Helliana said:

Can we all just agree that the people who use the wire duct where the fingers are all connected at the top should me beaten with a short piece of very high strand count 500MCM? Nothing worse than having to unhook one end of the wire to remove it from the wireduct.

Click to expand...

Agreed that that one is the worst for running into. The one with walls like Swiss cheese is a close second but there is no surprise of what is under the cover.

gray. cleaner

jholm90 said:

Agreed that that one is the worst for running into. The one with walls like Swiss cheese is a close second but there is no surprise of what is under the cover.

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Yes, we have a regular customer who requires the swiss cheese style duct. It is awful, IMO. I'm not sure what they consider the advantages of it.

Gray for white back panels and white for unpainted steel back panels and panels with minimal lighting or in dark areas works best from my experience.

Many suppliers sell white with a cling type plastic covering to keep the cover clean until finished and we always managed to keep the duct clean by keeping our hands clean when handling it.

There is also gray and international gray if using the Panduit brand.

Blue is normally for intrinsic wiring.

Black is normally used for power wiring (Motor Power Wiring, VFD cable, solenoid Valves, etc.)

Yellow and Orange are normally for communications wiring like CAT 5 Copper and Yellow is normally for Fiber.