Electric.ie July/August 2021

26 ELECTRIC.IE • The Magazine & Website for the Irish Electrical Industry • Rittal & Eplan: Your partners for sustainable panel building and switchgear manufacturing. Rittal M eurer-etechnik is looking to the new AX compact enclosure from Rittal to improve its production efficiency. How does the new model differ from its predecessor, the AE? A day spent with enclosure production staff reveals all. A new working day dawns at Murer-etechnik in Germany’s Westerwald region. In the incoming goods section, a young man wearing a black T-shirt with the company logo on the front and the sleeve is taking delivery of a pallet with eight AX compact enclosures from Rittal. Production Manager Steven Lauer is already waiting for their arrival. In just a week’s time, the UL-compliant enclosures are set to be delivered to a special- purpose machinery manufacturer based in the Cologne area. Lauer, can’t wait to see how the new AX enclosures differ from the predecessor model, the AE. Let’s get started, ” he says. Lauer has assigned the task of tting out the AX enclosures to three of the plant electricians. One ‒ Can enclosures be machined and fitted out even faster? How the AX compact enclosure from Rittal speeds things up. of them is already clamping the rst enclosure door into the Perforex CNC machining centre. The mounting plates are next. Progress is rapid, because the doors and mounting plates are simply added to the delivery package and staff don’t have the hassle of rst detaching them from the enclosure, as is normally the case. Using the digital twin’s manufacturing data from Eplan Pro Panel, the machine cuts all the necessary holes in double quick time. “ That part is the most fun, ” says Lauer, who is standing casually at the machine’s operator terminal. “There are hardly any questions to deal with and you can see the results straight away,” he adds. it’s now time for pre-assembly, con guration and wiring. A fully automatic wire processing machine has already produced the necessary cable harnesses – also using data from the Off to a Flying Start The Perforex cuts all necessary holes using data from the digital twin. Faster assembly: Interior fit-out is around 30 per cent quicker with the AX (bottom) than with the predecessor model, the AE.