Today we're going to continue taking a look at the basics of building an industrial control cabinet.

Today we're going to continue taking a look at the basics of building an industrial control cabinet. Last time we talked about the cabinet itself and choosing the right enclosure. Today we're going to talk about the main mounting surface that you put stuff on, which is not actually the cabinet itself. It's this insert sheet known as a back plane. The back plane is a sheet that you can remove from the cabinet to work on it without dealing with the confines of the walls of the cabinet. And it's usually fastened to the panel by sitting on four of these pillars that have a a washer and a nut. on them. It's actually a much easier working surface than trying to do everything inside of the cabinet. We'll talk about building an ideal panel layout in some future videos. But for now, let's talk about two of the most common components you see that sort of define the layout of your cabinet. This is often called Panduit because Panduit is one of the most common brands that makes this, but this is just a plastic duct work with slots in the sides that you weave wires into and you can lay this out so that you electrical components have lateral and vertical runs so that you get a very neatly organized overall cabinet. With slotted wireway, you usually also want to consider where you're going to put your din rail. Din rail is a 35 mm wide, sometimes slotted, sometimes solid back plane, strip of metal that almost all industrial controls components are designed to clip easily onto. So often you start your cabinet by picking out some bulky components like a drive or a PLC or a power supply and making sure that your din rail and your wireways are spaced in such a way that your components will fit. Since this is a very small control panel. I'll basically be putting a PLC up on top and I'll be putting some terminal strips and maybe some relays down on bottom. So this layout is pretty easy to just do one vertical run of wireway and then one lateral run of wireway and then a top and bottom short strip of din rail. So here's what it looks like now that I've fastened down my two two strips of din rail and my two strips of wire way. And the screws stick through in the back, but that's okay because they sit up high elevated on those pillars. I really like using these self-tapping sheet metal screws because you don't really have to do any pilot holes or tap the threads. And the back plane fits really nicely inside the cabinet and now it's time for us to start adding components in the next video.