IMO, your building inspector is stepping way outside of his authority.
His job is "building" inspection. You got a permit for your "building"
project. Not for some machine sitting in your building.
Unless your mill is part of the "building", he is way outside of his
authority.
If your mill is hardwired into your electrical system, that may be a
problem. You may need to have a plug and receptacle for your mill, with
the appropriate branch circuit protection (circuit breaker or fuse, etc)
for the outlet.
I would ask specifically why he believes your machine must be stamped
when it is not part of your building. Record exactly what he says.
Try and do as much in writing as possible. Emails work. Ask them what
standard codes they follow and ask them to cite the sections of the code
they are basing their decision on. Then appeal his decision. Tell
the guy you mean no disrespect, but that you disagree with his decision
and want to appeal it.
They should have a process to do that. Chances are that his boss will
not support his decision. Unless everything used in your county is
required to be UL approved (very unlikely), I think his decision will be
overturned. 7 engineers in the state who can apply a stamp are
inadequate to cover all of WA state! Just make sure you are decent
about it. People become irrational when they feel attacked.
If they push back you need to remind them that you are suffering from
loss of use due to what you believe is an arbitrary decision.
Do you know any lawyers in the area? If you can, you want to copy a
lawyer on all of your correspondence. The lawyer doesn't need to do
anything typically if you follow the appeals process. But including
legal counsel raises the bar significantly on their part. Tell the
lawyer you want to copy them in case they are needed. Etc.
When things get sticky for the inspectors, and you have legit arguments,
they will typically back off. Getting legal counsel involved is
incredibly sticky since they have to get "their" legal counsel involved
as well, and that costs $$, it sparks internal meetings. Lots of
paperwork, etc. Suddenly you turn into a plague on the department.
I do industrial integration and have been doing it since 2003. I have
LinuxCNC machines running in plants everyday.
But I'm in Indiana.
Dave
On 7/28/2021 3:14 PM, Ralph Stirling wrote:
I'm in a bind now. I just had the electrical wiring I put
into my garage shop inspected. The WA state inspector
liked my wiring fine, but balked at the non-UL-listed
CNC mill (the main point to my whole garage shop project).
He insists it get stamped by one of the *seven* official
"approved engineers" for the state of WA before he can
sign off on my electric. I suspect that the field approval
would cost considerably more than my entire mill (1998
vintage French 5hp spindle, 300x200x300mm travels,
$5K). Didn't matter to him that the new VFD is listed.
Any other US-based, especially WA-based LinuxCNC
retrofitters faced this problem successfully?
Thanks,
-- Ralph
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