On 06/09/2015 10:00 AM, Uncle Monster wrote:
When you're spending 8 hours a day working with bundles of #14 stranded wire as big around as your arm, you'll want an automatic stripper. The wires aren't stripped in close quarters inside the panel, the wire bundles are prepped while hanging outside of the panel. When you have a complicated system that may have connection changes made during the installation, the wires aren't run straight to the terminal with little or no slack.

Maybe in you world. We laid out the panels with Panduit wire duct
separating the banks of octal relay bases. First the intrarelay wiring
was done. Strip the end of the 16 gauge MTW, screw it to the terminal on
the base, run it to the correct relay, cut, strip, and screw it down.
For the pushbuttons, selector switches, Eagle Signal timers and so for
mounted in the doors, they would be harnessed up, the bundle run into
the duct, and then connected to the relay bases as needed.

My techs could use anything they wanted but after wrestling with
automatic strippers, they gravitated to Ideal T-5's.

On Tuesday, June 9, 2015 at 10:35:55 PM UTC-5, rbowman wrote:
On 06/09/2015 10:00 AM, Uncle Monster wrote:
When you're spending 8 hours a day working with bundles of #14 stranded wire as big around as your arm, you'll want an automatic stripper. The wires aren't stripped in close quarters inside the panel, the wire bundles are prepped while hanging outside of the panel. When you have a complicated system that may have connection changes made during the installation, the wires aren't run straight to the terminal with little or no slack.

Maybe in you world. We laid out the panels with Panduit wire duct
separating the banks of octal relay bases. First the intrarelay wiring
was done. Strip the end of the 16 gauge MTW, screw it to the terminal on
the base, run it to the correct relay, cut, strip, and screw it down.
For the pushbuttons, selector switches, Eagle Signal timers and so for
mounted in the doors, they would be harnessed up, the bundle run into
the duct, and then connected to the relay bases as needed.

My techs could use anything they wanted but after wrestling with
automatic strippers, they gravitated to Ideal T-5's.

The panels I refer to are six feet tall, mounted to a wall and the bundles of wire were hanging out of 2-1/2" conduit. The wires were all stripped and left hanging so test equipment could be connected to verify the location of the device or sensor at the other end of the wires so the wires could be labeled. A stripper like a T-5 was used at the device end in the other areas where only two to four wires needed to be trimmed, labeled and stripped for connecting. Using an Ideal Industries Stripmaster Wire Stripper was a quick and easy way for me to go through a large bundle of wires because it was easy to position each wire for stripping so they were all uniform. No connections were made until all wires were stripped, locations determined and labels applied. Laying out panels in a shop where one wire at a time is installed is someplace I too prefer to use a T-5. Oh yea, I'm quite fond of Panduit wire duct and their other products to use when building control panels or network racks. I really miss being able to do what I consider to be interesting work. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle Wire Monster

On 06/09/2015 11:22 PM, Uncle Monster wrote:
The panels I refer to are six feet tall, mounted to a wall and the bundles of wire were hanging out of 2-1/2" conduit.

We mostly used McKinstry freestanding enclosures. Some were smaller, but
many were 6x6x2 feet, big enough to live in. Some of the real estate was
taken up with motor starters. A Square D starter for a 25 HP motor isn't
too petit. Throw in a control transformer for the 120 VAC control
circuitry and that ate a little more room. The external runs were all
Liquatite. Thermoset molding shops can be dirty, and if you blow a line
on a 30 gpm pump, they can get oily pretty fast.

I miss it too. The whole US machine tool industry more or less went tits
up in the '70s. I traded relay logic for microprocessor logic but it
just ain't the same.

"rbowman" wrote in message
...
We mostly used McKinstry freestanding enclosures. Some were smaller, but
many were 6x6x2 feet, big enough to live in. Some of the real estate was
taken up with motor starters. A Square D starter for a 25 HP motor isn't
too petit. Throw in a control transformer for the 120 VAC control
circuitry and that ate a little more room. The external runs were all
Liquatite. Thermoset molding shops can be dirty, and if you blow a line on
a 30 gpm pump, they can get oily pretty fast.

I miss it too. The whole US machine tool industry more or less went tits
up in the '70s. I traded relay logic for microprocessor logic but it just
ain't the same.


Small stuff. Go to a size 5 starter. Throw in an inverter for a 250 HP
motor, or to take it to the next level, a starter for a motor that runs on
4100 volts. don't recall the HP or current.

I had to deal with that and PLC cabinets that had lots of wires in them.
Think of walking up to a wall that is about 5 feet tall of terminal strips
and 20 feet long.