current wiring project at work, thought i'd share.

[Kracin]

Engineers.... ugh. They should need a year in the field before they can have any input on anything in the field. If they "engineer" something to need a 1" pipe, I use 1 1/4. And I never use 1/2" unless there isn't room for 3/4".

But in the field when you are trying to get something to work, red lining the drawings is what happens if the wire is the wrong color or something like that. When you are flown in on a helicopter sometimes anything can be an color, lol. I've got a few red grounds/bonds out there, white negatives, etc.
I've pulled spare wires out from other panels in the area to fix things. Hell I have a #2 from a set of jumper cables being used in a panel out there. lol



When drilling into a complete (ish) panel I like using those magnetic parts holding dishes you can get for a couple bucks, nothing like having that ninja fleck end up in the exact wrong spot for power up or in a live box.
And the main reason for keeping the wire tight to the door is so that when billy joe bob the red neck opens it up to see why something isn't working he doesn't snag a wire on something in his pocket or whatever else, and to keep the weight of the wire off the terminations.




Up here you would be an electrician working on the panels, or if in a panel shop then a labourer. Instrument techs would be in some panels sometimes too. Automation and controls are generally Electricians.
In automations and controls as a Jman you could make between 80-200k here. As a panel guy in a shop I would say you would top out around 80, but that would be like head guy, more like 60k for most.

I am an Electrician, and while I seldom make large panels from scratch (I'm too expensive, they contract that out) I do a lot of field rewire/changes/fixes. And have done a few major rebuilds.

when doing holes on top or sides, to keep pieces from falling in, i'll make a cardboard cutout that fits front to back and side to side and angle it down, so anything that comes down falls right out. the spots for the EMT were already there though, they were just drops for the thermocouples and feeder that weren't in yet.


and speaking of ****** engineers, half the day was spent trying to figure out what the hell this guy was thinking. we spent HOURS welding together a new die cart that will ride on rails and allow operators to load dies into the press with ease, well he made it nearly 1 5/8" too short, and the die cart was only designed to be able to be raised up about 3/4 of an inch before needing serious modification. his measurements were so far off that the only possible way we could modify it would still take days because the special bolt size he ordered for the bottom, would only work for adding a half inch before needing new bolts of a longer size, which had to be special ordered.

not to mention multiple other issues that should have been non issues. lol


all engineers are definitely not like this, but i agree they need field experience before letting loose on large projects. personally i am going to be going for a mechanical engineering degree, as i'd prefer to design and plan out large projects than spend time fixing someone else's mistakes.

 

[jeff000]

I don't have the attention span to go back to school for Engineering. And I'm not even sure I could make as much as I do now as an Engineer.

I'm doing the design for the next phase of this pipeline automation we are doing. So I will have 55 sites where everything is my design, the engineer will then make sure what I make works and will designate the pile sizes, beam sizes, etc.

But at least this way I won't end up 200 miles from a road and needing some stupid betic bolt that no one stocks. Yes we are in Canada and we do everything in metric, but you can get every single type of imperial bolts basically everywhere, tracking down a stainless 19mm bolt is a 3 week ordeal. But I could get a 3/4 stainless everywhere, might even have an extra on my truck. And the worst is a 19 and a 3/4 is so damn close that it should work, but the threads are slightly different too, grrrr!

And we had one engineer that likes to prove he is smart or something so puts torque requirements in meter kilograms, really... who uses that?

 

[Stuart in MN]

Engineer bashing threads are so much fun.

 

[inphx]

Very cool - my 1st job was a fight simulator field service enginner. Got to do new installs, upgrades and troubleshooting. Miss the hands on.

 

[Boiler]

Looked pretty simple to me. Couple guys that work for me designed a scissor lift that has one drive wheel, one steer wheel, two casters, a traversing deck with limits, eight side sliders powered by electric actuators, each with limits and retract sensors, each withe tape switch bumpers, gate closure limit switches etc. it's crazy. Yesterday I got the call to help them troubleshoot it. I'll try to get a pic today.