Control Panel

The control panel is the most important and most complicated part of the brewery.  It will monitor and control temperatures, control pumps, as well as provide timers and alarms for specific events.  Temperatures will be controlled by three  PIDs or proportional-integral-derivative controllers.  The ones I'm using are Auber SYL-2352 PIDs and the timer is a Auber JSL-71.  The control panel is a watertight steel enclosure 16"(400mm)W X 16"(400mm)H X 8"(200mm)D with a back plate. Here is a slightly cutoff picture of it before I started working on it.  I forgot to take a picture of it before I started.

This panel will house all the electrical components and have all the controls and switches for the major brewery operations.  The first thing I did was sand the box to remove the top layer of the textured paint that was on it.  First thing was to decide how everything would be arranged on the panel.  I covered the top with painters tape to protect the face when I would be cutting the panel and marked all the locations where I was going to be adding components.

Laying out components

Holes for power meter and PIDs cut

Switch and LED holes drilled to 3/8"

Holes for switches and LEDs need to be 22mm or about 7/8" in diameter.  Drilling 7/8" holes can be quite a pain but luckily there is a perfect tool to handle this.  A Greenlee 1/2" conduit knockout punch which cuts perfect 7/8" holes easily.  The picture below shows the punch and the bits of scrap that were cutout.

Here is the front of the panel after the holes a punched.

There will be two SSRs (Solid State Relays) used to switch high current on and off to the main heating elements.  These need rather large heatsinks as they generate a lot of heat we don't want trapped in the control panel.  To remedy this we will mount the heatsinks outside the box on the top with the SSRs inside the box through holes cut in the top.  Here are pictures of the SSRs and the heatsinks the holes in the top of the box.

SSRs and Heatsinks

Measuring holes for SSRs

Holes cut for SSRs

The holes for the SSRs don't look that great but it doesn't matter as they will be covered by the heatsinks.

All the wiring into and out of the control panel will be in the bottom of the control panel.  This will be the main power in, two outputs to heating elements, Two outputs to pumps, and three connections for temperature probes.  Here is a picture of the bottom with all the holes cut.

Now it's time to paint this thing.  It will be painted gloss black.  Here is a picture of the unit all ready for paint.

That's as far as I am at this point on the control panel.  I will add more as I progress. Stay tuned!