How to Effectively Design Electrical Enclosures for Debri Ingress Protection

There are several occasions where there are thousands of custom enclosures requested by companies to have environmental resistance requirements. And majority of the time these enclosures should only need the environmental protection for their equipment. With this in mind, companies use NEMA standards to clearly explain what the enclosure should be able to do in terms of protection to have clear understanding on what level of resistance it should have in terms of dust, dirt, or water ingress. But they also clearly note that they do not need to formally meet NEMA’s standards.

On some occasions, there are companies that needs to formally meet all the NEMA requirement in which the enclosure should undergo certain testing. With this in mind, the companies send their enclosure to third-party testing facility in order form them to have the formal certification that their enclosure has meet all the necessary requirements.

Understanding NEMA Classification

The published standards NEMA has set is primarily intended to have a certain quality of standards for an electrical enclosure. This also set in palce for them to promote what standardized product specifications electrical devices might need. Needless to say, NEMA’s role is to give standards for the manufacturing companies to adhere to a certain quality classification. NEMA should be able to deal with the following goals:

1. For the enclosure to be able tor protect the personnel from dangerous internal parts of the equipment
2. To be able to protect the equipment inside the enclosure from the harsh environmental elements.

How to Meet NEMA requirements

1. Metal Sheet Enclosures

Needless to say, this type of electrical enclosure should be able to give protection from dust, debris, and water splashing or dripping. The sheet metal electrical enclosures are primarily designed to be able to meet the NEMA requirements in these type of enclosures: Types 1, 2, 4, 4X and 5. There are companies that needs enclosures that is needed to be immersed in the water, this type of enclosure is not suitable to type of companies that does marine offshore operations.

• Custom CNC machined enclosure

If a company wants an electrical enclosure that is needed to be submerged in water, this is the right type for that company. This enclosure is primarily designed to meet the following NEMA types: 1, 2, 4(X) and 5. This can also be totally sealed with the proper and right accessories. The accessory types are the: waterproof gaskets, or o-rings. These accessories are made to give enough protection from deep water immersion thus meeting the requirement for NEMA type 6 enclosure.

• Off the Shelf (OTS) Cast Enclosures with CNC Machined customizations

This type of enclosure will also meet NEMA Types 1, 2, 4(X) and 5 easily. This type of enclosure should be watertight with the proper accessories. This enclosure should come with minimal customizations as well as cutouts. Together with the right waterproof gaskets or o-rings, this enclosure should be able to meet the NEMA type 6P.