In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive world, businesses must constantly strive to improve their operations and increase productivity while maintaining high levels of safety and quality. This is where industrial control panels play a major role in achieving these goals, as they provide the necessary control and automation for machines and equipment. They help improve productivity by automating manual processes and reducing the need for human intervention.
The agenda behind using industrial control panels is to effectively manage all the operations under one base. They help control simple on or off processes to more complex ones using switches, sensors, relays and monitors. Overall, the industrial control panel is an important part of the manufacturing and automation industry. Let’s understand them better.
What Is an Industrial Control Panel?
Industrial control panels are devices used in manufacturing plants to make it easy for workers to control all the machinery at once, without having to walk around and manually operate each machine individually.
Benefits
Here are some of the benefits of using industrial control panels:
- An industrial control panel provides improved efficiency as it allows you to automate tasks that would otherwise be done manually to help save time and labour costs.
- It reduces the risk of human error and unfortunate accidents.
- It helps increase productivity by producing more products in less time, which means you can sell more products while still maintaining profitability levels. It will help reduce waste by ensuring that nothing goes wrong during the production or delivery process.
- Industrial control panels help improve safety for workers by eliminating hazardous conditions such as extreme temperatures or lifting heavy objects.
- They are designed to be durable, reliable and easy to maintain. They can withstand heavy use in harsh environments, which means they don’t break down as often as other types of equipment would. It will help reduce the downtime for repairs or replacements.
Components
Industrial control panels consist of several components that work together to provide smooth operation. To ensure that these components work properly, they need to be installed and maintained properly for a glitch-free operation. Here’s a list of components used in industrial control panels:
- Transformers & Power Supply- These components help maintain the current flowing between the circuits or machines.
- Circuit Breakers- They are used to protect the circuit from overload, short circuits or other electrical glitches that can damage the equipment. When there is an overload of current, the circuit breaker trips, thus preventing damage to the equipment and ensuring safety.
- Relays- They are used to control the electrical signals and switch electrical circuits on or off.
- Controllers- Controllers are the brain of the industrial control panel and they are used to manage and control the different devices and equipment connected to the panel.
- Sensors- They help detect changes in the system and provide feedback to the controllers.
- Switches- They manually turn the devices on or off, connected to the industrial control panel.
Applications of Industrial Control Panels
Industrial control panels are used for different purposes in the automation and manufacturing industry, but you can mostly see their usage in arc flash switchgear, conveyor systems to move products from one point to another, and packaging machines such as labelling, sealing and filling. Apart from this, industrial control panels are used in construction machine tools like drilling & milling machines and water treatment systems.
We hope you now know quite well about industrial control panels and their importance in the manufacturing and automation industry. An arc flash incident can cause severe injury or damage to the equipment. It makes sense why installing a rightly selected arc flash switchgear is important as it can prevent or mitigate the effects of arc flash incidents, ensuring the safe operation of industrial control panels.
