Tag Archive electronics enclsoure

Designing Enclosures that can Give Protection Against Water and Object Ingress

In this article, I want to share with you the knowledge that I have in designing and creating enclosures that should be able to withstand some of the extreme, harsh, and worse environmental hazards. This discussion would eventually bring us to the issue between NEMA and IP rating standards. Because these two standards most of the time brings confusion about how they work. With this in mind, this article is meant to somehow clear the air of confusion surrounding this subject. In order to make this more simpler, I will only use NEMA ratings for the majority of specifications but there are IP counterparts for the NEMA ratings I will mention. To make this article relatable.

As the writer of this article, I would like to make it to a point that I emphasized the importance of the designers’ consideration of what they are trying to get in designing enclosure. Design engineers should make sure that their agendas in designing the enclosure should be clear. Are they trying to achieve environmental protection the enclosure can give? Or are they trying to comply with the formal standards and requirement of NEMA for electrical enclosures? The latter might have been greatly influenced by the owner of the company or the manager of operations.

With this in mind, the enclosures should be made sure that these will really deliver what they are designed for. There are several variables a design engineer should consider in choosing the right type of enclosure they should have for their company. There are basic enclosures that give basic protection from any type of solid object ingress. A higher NEMA rating might mean that this enclosure will give higher protection. Unlike the IP ratings, NEMA rating will give the protection it can give aside from the water or solid object ingress.

The main difference between IP and NEMA, the latter gives the level of protection it gives for corrosion protection. For the enclosures that will be installed in very harsh environments, it is important that one of the basic needs for enclosure property is its capability to withstand corrosion. There will be also times that the enclosure will be partly or totally submerged in water so any NEMA rating of 6 will be helpful, so type 6 and 6p are considered as waterproof box, and the weatherproof cabinet is NEMA 4X enclosure.

With this in mind, NEMA enclosures types are primarily set to promote certain standardized product specifications for electrical devices. NEMA is designed to have specifications on how the enclosure should perform given the certain type of environment it will be exposed to. For the harsh environment, it is recommended that type 6 will be used. Aside from these features, NEMA ratings are designed to:

1. Protecting personnel from hazardous internal parts Give protection for personnel that might be exposed to hazardous internal parts and;

2. to protect the enclosure against damage from harsh environmental hazards.