Rittal, EPLAN and Kiesling: extended service partnership in switchgear engineering By taking over Kiesling Maschinentechnik, the Friedhelm Loh Group has considerably expanded its system-solution skills for switchgear and control cabinet engineering. The three companies - Rittal, EPLAN and Kiesling - form a unique global service partnership in this sector. Customers will profit in future from consistent system-solution skills and increasing productivity across the whole value creation chain in control cabinet and switchgear construction - from engineering to robot-based wiring.

Automation is the Future

With forward-looking automation solutions for switchgear construction, Kiesling Maschinentechnik provides new innovation potential in the company group. Customers will in future profit from the longstanding technological expertise in the mechanical processing of control cabinets. The latest technological breakthrough is the robot-based wiring system "Averex", which will replace the time consuming manual wiring of mounting plates and ensure fully automatically generated, standard-conforming and safety-oriented connections between devices in the mounting plate.

From Engineering to the Wiring Robot

The control cabinet constructor configures a solution based on the data from the EPLAN Data Portal, the schematic from the electrical or fluid power detail and hardware engineering as well as the system knowledge stored in the EPLAN Platform or the EPLAN Engineering Center on control cabinet components and accessories from Rittal. With EPLAN Pro Panel, they simply and comfortably set all predetermined devices and the accessories in 3D. In this way, information on fastening bores, bore threads or apertures are automatically generated or interactively supplemented if necessary. On the basis of the 3D control cabinet prototype and the connection information from the schematic, EPLAN Pro Panel identifies the optimum routing and the required lengths of wires and cables. All information required for the material disposition, the mechanical processing or the assembly and/or laying of wires is provided by EPLAN in the form of order lists and bills of material, production and assembly drawings or as machine programs.

Perfect teamwork of all disciplines:

From engineering and control cabinet construction to robot-based, automated wiring.

Fully Integrated Production

If the construction meets the technical specifications, the "real" control cabinet construction with components from the program "Rittal - The system" can begin. The mechanical processing of the cabinet and the mounting plate using the processing machines from Kiesling is the next step. The wiring data and the information from the 3D model provided by EPLAN on parts and their position on the mounting plate are transferred via a dedicated machine interface on the Kiesling wiring robot "Averex". On the basis of this information, the robot first verifies and checks the manually assembled mounting plate and then carries out the wiring of the components independently and fully automatically. Changing the wire when the colour or cross section are changed is included. This is considerably faster than manual wiring - time and cost saving as well as a consistent workflow are the resulting success factors.