Control Panels for Food & Beverage

Sterling Made designs and builds UL 508A control panels for food processing plants, beverage production facilities, and packaging operations. Panels built for washdown environments with precise motor control for conveyors, mixers, pumps, and packaging equipment.

Panel Types

Process line control panels — Cooking, mixing, blending, forming with recipe management and temperature control
Packaging line control panels — Fillers, cappers, labelers, case packers, palletizers with coordinated multi-axis speed control
Refrigeration control panels — Ammonia or freon systems, blast freezers, cold storage, compressor staging
CIP control panels — Automated cleaning cycles with flow, temperature, and conductivity verification
Batch control panels — Ingredient batching and blending with load cell inputs and recipe-driven control per ISA-88

Common Specifications

Specification	Typical Requirement
Enclosure	NEMA 4X 304 stainless for production/washdown; NEMA 12 for dry packaging areas
Voltage	480V 3-phase for motors, 208V in some facilities, 120V control power
Motor control	VFDs for conveyors, pumps, mixers, fans; across-the-line starters for fixed-speed
Safety	Safety-rated E-stop circuits, guard interlock monitoring, STO on VFDs per ISO 13849
Communication	Ethernet/IP or EtherNet to plant MES or SCADA; IO-Link for sensors
Sanitary	No exposed carbon steel, sealed conduit entries, sloped enclosure tops

Example Project

Packaging Line Motor Control Panel

A New England beverage producer adding a new bottling and packaging line needed a panel coordinating eight variable-speed conveyors, two case packers, a labeler, and a palletizer. Sterling Made built a 480V 3-phase panel in a NEMA 4X 304 stainless enclosure with twelve ABB ACS380 micro VFDs (0.5–5 HP), a CompactLogix L18 PLC, 10-inch PanelView Plus 7 HMI, and a safety circuit with four E-stop stations and six guard interlocks monitored by a GuardLogix safety processor. Safety circuit designed per ISO 13849 PLd with safe torque off (STO) on all VFDs. SCCR calculated at 65 kAIC per UL 508A Supplement SB.

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