Test-cell power and control line-up for a factory drive test floor

The challenge

A drive manufacturer was fitting out a test floor where finished drives are run under power before they ship. It needed the panels that feed and load each test cell:

• 690 V multi-drive test positions;
• 480 V "test" (output) and "load" (input) panels;
• a 690 V breaker panel;
• a central PLC and touch-screen station tying the cells together.

The panels had to arrive in sequence so the floor could come up cell by cell while construction carried on around it.

What we did

• Designed and built eight assemblies in our UL 508A shop: two 690 V multi-drive test panels, each serving four test positions; a 690 V breaker panel; two pairs of 480 V test and load panels; and a PLC and touch-screen control panel on remote I/O.
• Full-height free-standing enclosures (90" × 72" double-door), with molded-case breakers on rotary operators, contactor banks with wye-delta starting and mechanical interlocks, open-style power distribution blocks rated 1000 V, plug-in control relays and 24 VDC control power.
• Staged delivery: panels were picked up as each finished. The shop kept building the rest while our technicians completed final fit-out of the delivered ones on site, working through the customer's safety and site-access rules.
• Programmed the PLC and HMI and commissioned on site: about three days each on the first panels, about a day each on the rest once the pattern was proven.
• Weekly status calls with percent-complete per panel. Schematics were kept current through to as-built.

The result

The test floor came up cell by cell, and follow-on requests from the facility have continued since.

What it shows: 690 V industrial power and control panel work, multi-panel coordination, staged delivery into a live construction site, and in-house PLC/HMI programming and commissioning, all from one shop.

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