Saturday, July 28, 2012

INSTRUMENTATION PROJECT: A change of plans

Back in May I mentioned how I was planning on reusing the case from Kings 8001 Loran unit for the new propulsion battery bank instrumentation project at the helm. Well those plans have changed. It seemed like a good idea. In addition to the case I was going to use the metal shield from between the circuit boards to mount the voltage and current meters:

I cut the panel to size and then used paper cut outs to check the lay out of the voltage and current meters. At first things seemed to fit if a little awkwardly::


But, when I tried the actual meters I realized they were not going to fit in the space available:
 

So then I thought I would just use the case to house the digital volt meters and mount the current meter in a second box:

But, the four pole on/off switch still made things a little tight. So I decide to scrap the idea of using the old Kings Loran box for this project and come up with a new design for the instrumentation at the helm. I'll show what I came up with in a future post.

3 comments:

She:Kon said...

Hi Capt'n Mike

When I designed my AC/DC dist panel I used

http://www.frontpanelexpress.com/

They give you a free CAD program to design and cost out your panel.

This is what my panel ended up looking like.

http://s237.photobucket.com/albums/ff166/KnottyBuoyz/KBIII/Inventory/?action=view&current=elec_panel.jpg

What I learned is you have to pay as much or more attention to the back of the panel for switch & breaker spacing.

It was a fun and interesting project but definitely not cost effective. I could bought a production panel for less.

Anyhow, thought you might like to know about frontpanelexpres.com

Rick

She:Kon said...

PS. I'm doing a mimic panel as a winter project.

http://she-kon.blogspot.ca/2012/06/mimic-panels.html

Capt. Mike said...

Rick:

Thanks for the front panel express info. Nice AC/DC panel layout! Mimic panel looks pretty cool too! Yes, those switches and breakers take up a lot more real estate behind the panel. I would have like to recycled the Loran box but, it was just a little too small to fit everything in there. Since these meters are going to be mounted at the helm position I was able to find a nice waterproof box with the space I needed and some for future additional instrumentation I'll be adding later. It still needs a little more fabrication and wiring. I'll be posting about it soon as I make some more progress on it.