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P&ID Symbol - Indentification help 2

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Muon1

Mechanical
Jan 21, 2013
17
Hi all,

I was going through a P&ID today and I saw an unfamiliar symbol, I think it might be an hydraulic actuator, but I'm not to sure. It's a circle with a curly tail. I had a look through the ISO standards but nothing came up. Can someone please provide an answer. I've attached a picture.

Thank you.
 
 http://files.engineering.com/getfile.aspx?folder=826428f8-9564-4d3f-ad4d-d0e0c3fbc779&file=SYMBOL.jpg
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Based on what your sketch shows I would guess it is a non-standard "Made-Up" symbol for that specific project.

You have some opinions:
A- All projects are supposed to have a P&ID Legend Sheet showing all symbols and their description. Have you looked for the Legend Sheet for your Project?
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B- Have you met the Lead Process Engineer for your Project yet? Go find him or her and ask them what that symbol means. If they don't know you are in real trouble.
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C- Use the Internet to find what you need by doing simple searches. Such as:
or

Sometimes its possible to do all the right things and still get bad results
 
Thanks for replying pennpiper.
I did a web search and nothing came up. I also checked the legend but it wasn't on there either. I haven't spoken to the Lead Process Engineer, I'll do that first thing when I get into the office.

Thanks again.
 
It would be good to see where it is used in a diagram but is it a hand held, but cable attached control unit? Like one you might use for a crane control? you would normally expect it to have a few notes attached to define it better.

Never seen anything like it before now.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
 
Typically, the "curlie-cue" symbol I see (attached to the "Circle-H" symbol) is a note to the drafter to remove that item. It may be that an engineer meant to indicate in the drawing for that item to be removed and it accidentally just got retained. This is just editorial convention though when marking up P&IDs for drafting in my experience.
 
Hydrogen sperm!

In all seriousness though, adammal44's suggestion seems very plausible. And as pennpiper said, ask the process engineer. I've also had luck once in a while asking the CAD guys who actually modify the PIDs all day long, they usually have a decent handle on what everything represents.
 
Typically, the "curlie-cue" symbol I see is a note to the drafter to remove that item.

I admit to never seeing that convention having viewed thousands of P&ID markups from dozens of companies.

Piping Design Central
 
Duwe6, are you implying that "copy editing" symbology (traditionally understood as belonging to commenting on text-based information transmission in storytelling and narratives) is now being used on P&IDs by people with authority to make changes?

I think I might see the problem...



Piping Design Central
 
It's a clear, proven shorthand method to indicate changes to a document. Shouldn't be that shocking.
 
I've asked the originator of the drawing, he was on holiday so I've had to wait a few days until his return. It turns out it is an hydraulic actuator that's mounted on a valve, but the symbol was created because there wasn't one with the drawing template or in the symbols library. I've had the drawing updated with a correct symbol and the legend now identifies the symbol correctly. It turns out that I wasn't the first to ask the originator what the symbol was, but it seems that a most people just ignored it.

Thank you to everyone who replied to my question.
 
Thanks for the follow-up, Muon, to close the loop on this thread.
 
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