Now that's what I call a control panel!

[Grizzly]

You don't see the attached anymore! note the step controller on the r/hand side.
Grizzly

[chemi-cool]

When it was new, it was state of art....

[Brian_UK]

When it was new, it was state of art....

Mind you, Art was rubbish in those days...

[Grizzly]

That's a good one!
Some of the others in the switch room make you reluctant to even open thier doors.
On the quarterly maintenance checks, I just open their doors to check (safely from a distance) there are no charred cables etc.
As its 40 yrs old you cannot be expected to do much more really.
Grizzly

[monkey spanners]

As its 40 yrs old you cannot be expected to do much more really.
Grizzly

I'm nearly 40 and that's about all I do too

[chemi-cool]

I'm nearly 40 and that's about all I do too

You are just being modest.

[r.bartlett]

I'm nearly 40 and that's about all I do too

and I can't remember that far back.....

[goshen]

Hi
some of those electrical components should be historical artifacts !!!
i love those contactors ,we have some boards like these and we do he same, open the door take a glimps,e and shut it till it burns down !!or untill next time

[Rob White]

.

Is the three contactor arangement a star delta configeration?

panel.JPG

Regards

Rob

.

[beachsideac]

Wow! I haven't seen an antique like that in years! Brings back some memories! Thanks for sharing!

[ManxManSam]

Rob, yes it's a star delta starter, the two on the right are mechanically interlinked, the bottom one is the star shorting contactor, the contactor on the left is the line contactor with the overload wired after it. Its not that bad a panel, try working on panels made during the WW2 in a foundry.... Apart from the hand drawn parchment drawings, not one cable is numbered!!

[Frikkie]

That's a newish control panel, it's even got those new PVC type wires in it. Should last another 30 years if you stop opening the door every six months

[glenn1340]

How about this one

[SeanB]

Still tidy. The one on a machine at work I removed 20kg of copper wire during overhaul, just to get to where I could see the back of the board, and to remove 40 years of bodge wires and 40 years of mystery parts and of course dirt and gunge. Then I added some more, too much work to remove all the pneumatics from the back side to change one wire, so a few are now on the front side. I did add something it lacked all these years, circuit breakers, instead of expensive and hard to get Diazed fuses, as well as surge suppression and surge limiters, as I was adding a VFD drive in as well.

Even better was that it did not blow up when I turned on the power the first time, though it did not work of course......... fixed those little faults ( some me, some broken wires in the end of the panel wiring) and since then it has racked up 2.6 million cycles of operation. I added that counter, only one I had at hand was a 6 digit one, so have had to look at records when it rolled over. Took a little over a year and a half to make the first million cycles. That was one very busy December, even worked Christmas day IIRC.

[Grizzly]

How about this one

Nice one Glenn.
I have not seen one that bad for quite some time, but I have my trusty camera with me just in case.

Grizzly

[Magoo]

Seems that the younger generation want everything picture perfect. But testerment to older panels is that they are still operational. I always say "if you don't know what you are touching, then don't touch it ".
Note that the older gear was/is more tollerent than some of the latest generation crapp encounted these days

[mikeref]

Thinking back a few years now, there was 750 horse power motor driving a step up gearbox that drove a chiller on R11. The control panel was manually operated with switches numbered one to six with large green and red lights above each of the switches.
Operator would turn on switch 1, lowest motor speed and when red light changed to green, the second switch was turned on.....and so forth.
No-one was ever game enough to engage speed 5 or 6 as this was a 1930's machine with a lot of vibration and strange noises.