Why a Custom Control Panel?

Industrial Control Solutions When people hear the word custom, two things often come to mind: it’s going to be expensive, and it’s going to have a long lead time. Neither of these has to be the case when working with TUTCO Farnam. Designing and manufacturing a custom control panel is about finding the best possible solution for a customer’s specific application. It’s the same approach we take with our process heaters, so it makes sense that we would take the same approach with our control panels.

Customers often are unsure of what they need their control panel to do. They know they need a control panel but they don’t know what they want or need the panel to do. Other customers know exactly what they need and already know that one of our standard panels won’t work for their process. In both cases, we can guide customers through our process—asking the necessary questions to understand the application and the demands of the customer’s system. Through our questions, we often uncover opportunities to control more than just the system’s heater. It may be valves that need to open and close, blowers that require variable speed control, or other pieces of equipment like motors or a linear actuator.

TUTCO Control Panels Control More Than Heat

TUTCO Farnam control panels do much more than manage set point temperatures and high temperature limits. We can include controls for motion control, variable frequency drives (VFDs), and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). With a PLC, you can control pretty much any component you want and that you can program them specific to the customer application. We can also incorporate safety features, lighting controls, stack lights, and alarms. We also build controller to manage multi-zone systems. A multi-loop panel doesn’t mean you have to multiply the cost. Once we’ve built the panel and its core components, adding loops or other functions doesn’t necessarily drive up costs in a significant way. The final cost often depends more on the total load and amperage than on how many separate controls are included.

When talking to TUTCO Farnam about a custom control panel, customers do not need to have an understanding of every detail of what they want. They just need to tell us what you want the panel to control and what the desired end results are, and we’ll take it from there. If there are certain brands you prefer, we’re happy to accommodate, but we don’t expect them to have to know what theyu would like to use.

At TUTCO Farnam, we create complete solutions based on our understanding of heating systems and the process they need to work in. Our experience allows us to deliver custom solutions that work at a high level in the applications they are designed for. If you think you need more than a standard control panels and would like to build something tailored to your application, reach out to begin the process.

Custom Control Panels - Engineer Discussion Intro