dp Brewing New Control Panel

dp Brewing Company · Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:20 pm Post subject: dp Brewing New Control Panel

I'm rebuilding my control panel. The panel I was using was always suppose to be temporary. I had made the temporary one out of wood to get up and going. Four years later I was still using it. I just wanted to start this tread to keep track and document some notes of my panel. As always I got all the inspiration from this website and all the wonderful people with great ideas!

Here are the changes I wanted to make this time around:

1) Have the ability to have three pumps. I've had a back to back (50amp) system for some time but always wished I had three pumps on the days I've done the back to back batches.

2) Have two elements in the HLT. This is more of want than need. I'm adding a 4500w element in addition to the 5500w element in my HLT. Mainly to just speed up step mashes and the start of my day. I had to get very creative (or creative for my skill set) on this one because I wanted to keep the back to back setup but have three elements. This is requiring me to add some additional blocks on the back of the HLT element selector switch. Meaning I have an On/Off BK switch and a Element 1/Off/Both Elements on my HLT switch. I had to wire my BK switch through the HLT switch with a NC block. In turn this means if I have both elements on in the HLT the BK element can not turn on. If I switch the HLT switch back to just one element I can now turn on the BK element.

3) I'm not the best when it comes to using a solder iron on very small parts. My old temp probes constantly had issues with the wires coming loose. So I decided to try a different approach. I bought 10' XLR cables

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0719HX3CY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&psc=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=theelectricbrewery-20&linkId=99d3dffe672178e769de0b72f8b13c8f

and took the female side apart and then assembled it on the panel. Will make more sense with the photo's I've attached. I measured the amount I needed, cut off the rest and used the cut off part to attach to my temp probe wires. This way I didn't have to do any soldering except for attaching the XLR wires to the temp probe wires.

Genuine · Joined: 31 May 2018 Posts: 8 Location: Putnam/Dayville, CT

Looks great so far!

dp Brewing Company · Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:25 pm Post subject:

**kal** · Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:39 pm Post subject:

Looks good!

With 3 pumps make sure to keep an eye on power/current usage to make sure you stay below the 50A limit. Should be fine if you're "only" using 4500W elements (and not 5500W) but something to keep in mind.

Kal

dp Brewing Company · Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:45 pm Post subject:

dp Brewing Company · Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 5:09 pm Post subject: More photos of current state

Here are some more photos of the current state of the panel. Still a little bit left but I'm in the home stretch.

dp Brewing Company · Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 5:14 pm Post subject:

I forgot to mention. Two other things I added:

1) The Alarm light is actually a light with momentary switch to mute the alarm

2) I have a power switch (breaker) on the right side of the box. The blue light is actually a light with detent switch. Power to the PID's and pumps runs through the blue light/switch. It has to be depressed before power goes to those items. I figured that would be another good way to keep unwanted people from using the panel.

Tungsten · Joined: 06 Dec 2014 Posts: 318 Location: Buffalo, NY