Enclosures
of building it from scratch," said Butts. "Also, when it goes down our paint line all the edges get powder coated, compared to others that may just touch it up with spray paint," he added.
Hammond's traditional
modification services typically have a four-week turnaround for a first order then three weeks for the next order. Modifications include non-standard sizes, special paint colors, alternate material construction, cutouts, punched and tapped holes, pre- installed accessories, silk screening, as well as handle and hinge changes.
The Protocase Designer online tool delivers seamless electronic ordering fromdesign to procurement
two to three days, a lot of its work comes from using Protocase's template designs.With a template, customers have an initial set of standard designs to choose from and then customize.
"We offer a set of standard designs that
someone can start with when developing an electronic product," said DouglasMilburn, Ph.D., Protocase's co-founder and vice president of sales & marketing, Nova Scotia, Canada. "By starting from a template, customers don't have to do the work of designing the enclosure from scratch; they are starting from a base design."
"We are fundamentally a custom However, the company's Q-Mod program
offers turnarounds in two weeks for limited modifications. For this program, Hammond offers three standard color options and no size changes.
For its modular rack and cabinet lines,
Hammond launched its Q-Assembly (www.q-
assembly.com) program, which is an easy-to- use online configurator assembly tool based on parts descriptions instead of part numbers.
Accessories include shelving, grounding kit, mounting
hardware, outlet strips, thermal management, and cable management. "There are tons of accessories that you can add to your rack," said Hammond.
"If you're trying to piece together a cabinet for the first time
you can build up your desired cabinet for quoting without having to know any part numbers," said Hammond. “It's all description based and builds a bill of materials for the customer. It uses all standard components to build a solution," he added.
"Although we don't install their equipment, we will install
shelving, cable managers and other accessories so the customers get their cabinets ready to go rather than have to install onsite on their own," said Hammond.
Lead time is typically one to two weeks maximum depending
on volume. If it's one cabinet, it could be a couple of days for Q-Assembly, said Hammond.
Hammond says there are five options that OEMs shouldn't
forget when they are designing their datacom enclosures. These include mounting hardware, blanking panels, cable management, shelves and doors, and power distribution.
"Nine times out of ten specifiers will forget to include these and come back asking for it," Hammond said.
Customization with a template Although Protocase builds fully custom enclosures from print in
38 | June 2011
manufacturer because everything we sell is built once the order is in and finalized. There are a lot of our customers who don't care about the details of the base package so the template is a standard design and it is highly configurable," saidMilburn.
Protocase offers more than just
The Protocase Designer offers easier purchasing by generating quotes instantly
10-inch, 12-inch and 14-inch designs. “You can choose exactly the size you
need, and the enclosure can be further
customized with cutouts, silkscreens, powder coating, fasteners, hardware and whatever else is needed,"Milburn said.
To make it even easier, Protocase's online design tool called a
template generator allows the customer to choose from five styles of enclosure such as a rackmount, U-shape, L-shape or flat panel. "You have the freedom to get the exact dimensions you want versus an off-the-shelf enclosure."
Once a customer generates a blank enclosure, they can
specify the cutouts, color, type of metal, and hardware including fasteners and slides, etc., saidMilburn. The customer can modify any part as long as it can be built by flexible sheet metal manufacturing, he added.
Then they can choose the design format such as SolidWorks,
AutoCAD or just a PDF file. "Because we turn around our manufacturing in two to three
days the way of looking at enclosures dramatically changes," saidMilburn. "At the point where the customer draws the design, hands it off to the supplier and the supplier builds a custom powder-coated, silkscreened enclosure in two to three days, it gives the customer an immense amount of freedom to think differently about the whole enclosure acquisition process," he added.
“It's lean manufacturing to the extreme," saidMilburn. However, Protocase's services don't target high-volume
customers. It best suits low volume/high value products as well as small projects where the typical order is one to ten. Key
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