Tag Archives: tips

Top 5 Control Panel Insights – From Industrial People

Control panel, ,

This week, I reviewed the most engaging industrial control panel threads on r/plc and used a Gemini prompt to aggregate the community’s best advice:

  • Thermal Management: To prevent premature failure from rising heat, avoid placing heat-sensitive devices above heat-generating ones like Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs). This seems obvious, but nuances exist—I will expand on this in a deeper dive later.

  • The “25% Expansion Rule”: Always leave 25–30% open space on back panels and DIN rails. This allows for future system modifications without requiring a full cabinet replacement.

  • Back Panel Labeling: Mount component labels directly to the mounting plate rather than wire duct covers. This ensures technicians can still see the labels during maintenance, and prevents them from getting lost when someone removes the duct covers.

  • EMI Mitigation: Maintain strict physical separation between high-voltage AC power and low-voltage DC control signals to prevent electromagnetic interference. You cannot ignore this rule. It is like smoking cigarettes: EMI will be the diagnosis for all future mysterious ailments of the system.

  • Hinge Wire Management: Use “S” or “U” shaped service loops at door hinges so wires twist rather than pull, which prevents mechanical fatigue.

Next week, I will update these bullets with links to deep-dive posts—especially for points 1 and 4.

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CODESYS Tip:Updating variable sets quickly

CODESYS,

Some of the guys at the office just got back from a SoMachine Motion CODESYS session in Germany. One of them noted a CODESYS tip/trick to change the variable name prefixes or suffixes that will save programmers a lot of time and tedious work.

Holding down the Alt key allows for a vertical highlighting feature. 

CODESYS Tip: Highlighting multiple variables vertically
Highlighting multiple variables vertically

From the example above:

Changing the word ‘Read’ to ‘Write’ can be done in one quick update for the entire list:

CODESYS Tip: Type out replacement for highlighted variable
Type out replacement for highlighted variable

This is useful for common parts of a variable name, like above. Other examples may include:

  • Change user defined data type names on a set of assignments.
  • Adding a prefix to a mirror set of variables- e.g. SCA to variables shared with a SCADA system.

Look out for:

‘Copy and paste’ ( Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V) is a large source of PLC program bugs and errors. Several articles on programming cover the ‘copy and paste’ issues in depth. A cool feature like this Alt-key highlighting might feed the problem.

As such, practice caution. Saving a few minutes in tedious work is good as long as it doesn’t cause hours of troubleshooting later. Follow through with a visual check to pick up errors. Copy and paste does not negate the need for System 2 thinking which is the conscious and logical thinking instead of the subconscious and automatic thinking.

Having said that, this is one CODESYS trick I wished I had learnt a few years ago. Thank you, Jared.

 

 

 

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