the quantity of labour required in manufacturing; on the other, there’ s the need for quality, which means relevant skills and experience. While assembly services can suffer from a lack of sufficient internal resource, hiring relevant, temporary expertise can be difficult. Meanwhile, manufacturers or engineering firms don’ t want to utilise more skilled staff on tasks where they could be deployed more effectively to match their capabilities.
When it comes to the integration of electrical components or electronic devices within industrial enclosures, this lends itself to external support in assembly. By their nature, industrial enclosures are self-contained units, sitting on or outside a machine or system, rather than embedded and protected within. This makes their complete or partial assembly by an external team a lot more straightforward to manage from a design integration perspective.
Typical assembly requirements for an industrial enclosure include electrical terminals and DIN rails. As a further stage, assembly services can involve the installation of devices such as I / O points, controllers, sensors, user interfaces such as keypads, as well as alarms, lights, or wider output devices. Installing these components within an enclosure can also involve adding the connections, including cables and glands.
When specifying an enclosure, the most important thing is capabilities in protecting the device within, as well as the people interacting with it.
Selecting an assembly service When selecting an outsourced service for enclosure assembly, the common routes are either contracting a specialist electronics assembler or working directly with an enclosure supplier. The primary advantage of partnering with the enclosure manufacturer, assuming that they can offer the required assembly service, is that the approach retains accountability.
Firstly, accountability with a single supplier means a faster, more efficient process that minimises the timescale by reducing the time required for transportation and administration. Secondly, it retains responsibility for both the quality and speed of assembly with the enclosure supplier. If customisation of the enclosure is also required, such as CNC machining insert points for a keypad or cable, it makes even more sense to keep assembly requirements with the enclosure manufacturer, as this minimises the potential for errors.
At Spelsberg UK, the in-house team comprising designers, CNC machinists, and assembly specialists is scaled to work on one-off enclosures, through to large order batches. This can extend to the assembly of switchgear and control systems, through to turn-key projects. Crucially, these integrated on-site services also enable accurate and reliable project planning with a rapid turnaround.
All-service enclosure team
When specifying an enclosure, the most important thing is capabilities in protecting the device within, as well as the people interacting with it. This housing must also be reliable, achieving the right level of protection long term. However, after an OEM designer or system integrator has ensured that these key enclosure qualities can be met, it’ s important to look at how efficiently the end project can be fulfilled, which includes its assembly.
Selecting an enclosure manufacturer that can provide a high-quality design, combined with an efficient assembly service, can make an inhouse manufacturing or engineering team’ s task a lot easier.
For further information, please visit www. spelsberg. co. uk
Issue 80 PECM 7