Engineering a Clean-room Monitoring System

Back in September, I was given a rather special opportunity to "wire up" a multi-room monitoring system for a clean room, a monitoring lab, and assembly/finishing area.

I was given a box of parts, spools of various communication wire and vague directions. Like, "Build this".

I couldn't have been happier, seriously! I *love* things like this; it's why I wanted this career.

"Well, you can look at the other system we have; there arent any drawings [electrical wiring diagrams] for it, but maybe that will help..." I was told by Pat O. Well, nothing is labeled. Parts were added later. Parts were removed later. Nothing can be traced out, as everything is in a tight bundle or knotted beyond belief. Can't really touch anything, as this is monitoring a live system. To boot, it's about 110dB in this room.

A power supply went bad and nobody could fix it for two days, as they couldnt locate it. It was in the ceiling. May I stress the importance of ELECTRICAL DRAWINGS and LOGICAL LAYOUTS?

Anyways, here's my system:

The CAT-5 running out of place was not mine.

Anyways, I'd drawn up blueprints in Excel (faster that way, dont ask) after going online and downloading all the product information for the temperature sensors, particle sniffers, the D/A-I/O converter and USB module, the stacklights (with unknown controllers in the prefab boxes) even the cabling to make sure it was compatible with the MODBUS runs.

There was cable pulling of all sorts and near-impossible ways to access it, working around the Utility guys and constant interruptions by Journeymen that needed "help" with this or that. The cabinet pictured here had to be modified to accept power and be portable; it was quite a bit of work making it acceptable, and make the removable cabinet side possible to be removed. A bit of slack in particular places below the reinforcement rails, using a quad receptacle box as a junction box also, power was run in to the terminal blocks and the additional fused rail-mounted convenience receptacle.

From there, a 24v supply powers the components. The stacklights are  powered by 24v and also controlled completely by MODBUS.

Here's a JPEG of my Excel blueprints. I made them pictoral, so even the least-skilled onlooker can decipher how it works. All b'prints and system files, documentation, even a training video on the particle counter...everything, was burned onto DVD-R supplied by me. The department leader got a copy and one was left in the cabinet.

It was a great project. Everyone was impressed. 

When the vendor/contractor came out to install the software, he turned it on and everything worked.

Perfectly.

I don't think people realized how much work went into this.

I was recognized by an engineer and put in for my second company award. 

The Bronze "Expertise" award.

Expertise

Dear TS,

Thanks for your dedication and expertise in getting the SGB equipment installed quickly and accurately, which allows the Perenna program to stay on track.

From TM

Of course, this wasn't good enough three months later according to the two people not involved with this project AT ALL, other than checking up on me on the third day of the project, in the middle of figuring out how the system is supposed to work, as I was pulling some of the communication cables. 

[Critic]"You should have mounted the stack lights first, so it at least looks like you're doing something!"

[Myself] "Well, then lets say I mount them on day one. Then it looks like I'm not doing anything later on"

That apparently wasn't logical to him. The Engineer and the Department leader checked in on me EVERY SINGLE DAY and saw the progress. They didn't seem to have a problem with it.

And the other system? It went down recently, it took over a day to fix it, as there are no drawings nor blueprints, so that add-on power supply in the ceiling that failed was hard to find. Nobody knew it existed.

I took three weeks to do this, did it all by myself, minus a couple hours help at the end from [Someone]. According to [Critic] and what he tried to convince my boss, was that "Nothing was done until we sent [Someone] to help you, and suddenly it was done".

I'm just an Apprentice, so I have to deal with this crap.