We have just delivered a very unique 250A distro to a returning customer.

The brief

We were contacted by our customer in the medical industry with a requirement for a distro. This needs a cabled input of 250A 3 phase and 4 outputs of 125A 3 phase. Each of the outputs are to be protected by a variable RCD. This will be based at their operations location and used to connect several plant to the mains supply. The unit needs to be mobile and manageable.

The concept

Using this information, one of our design Engineers set to work on a concept which would not only fulfil the client brief, but which he thought would surpass this. Our Engineer considered that the weight of the 10m, 70mm, 5 core cable attached to the distro would be heavy and difficult to manage. To overcome this, he designed a storage tray which the cable could be coiled into. The size of the tray was determined by the bend radius and overall dimensions of the cable. Our design Engineer also looked at the resulting dimensions and how, with the weight of the cable, it would be moved. The solution was to add multiple lifting points and wheels, some of which are locking. The resulting gap between the wheels allows for forklifting. The overall rigidity of the distro would be achieved using thicker, 12mm polypropylene.

The build

Once the customer saw our design and price, they placed the order with us straight away. We moved the concept into the developed CAD file within a day or two and then to the CNC machine. Our experienced fabrication team had the box built within a few hours. After this, it was passed onto our wiring team. Most of the components are kept in stock, but the M63 gland required for the 58mm diameter cable wasn’t something we had on the shelf. We utilised our supplier network to receive this on a next day delivery to ensure there was no delay in getting this to our customer.

Our wiring team set to work stripping the cable down, feeding it through the gland and terminating it into the internal distribution block. We achieved this using our battery powered hydraulic crimping tool from Total Connections 2009 to fit the lug to the cable to make a solid connection. The outputs were wired to the distribution block to supply the MCBs which we had prefitted with shunts and variable RCDs. The last step in wiring was to connect the 125A PCE sockets and earth lug.

Once the build was finished and the final panel screwed in place. The distro went through to our quality control and testing team. All of our distros are tested before being shipped to the customer.

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