Enclosures


Use the original enclosure manufacturer to modify the housing to the project – it’s by far the best option to control costs and reduce time to market


By Russell Irvine, European account manager, Hammond Electronics A


ll PCBs and small systems will have to be housed in an enclosure so that they can be used. While there is a significant part of the market


where PCBs are mounted in subracks which are in turn housed in 19” racks and cabinets, the great majority of products for hand-held or desktop use will be housed in some form of an enclosure. For the OEM, when specifying the enclosure, there are two main options: to have an application-specific custom enclosure designed and manufactured, or use one of the many designs of standard enclosure on the market. In low to medium volumes a custom designed enclosure will not be cost-effective and will possibly delay the product’s launch.


Standard enclosures are available in various plastics, normally polycarbonate or ABS, die-cast or extruded aluminium or in steel. All have their strengths and weaknesses depending on where, and in what environment, the unit will be


installed. The main advantages of standard enclosures are that there are no up-front non-recurrent design, engineering and tooling charges; stock is on the shelf ready for immediate delivery, so the time to market is as low as possible; the unit costs are attractive and the design will have been field proven in many different applications.


However, standard products are exactly that: standard. To meet the needs of a specific project, they will typically have to be machined with suitable apertures to accept switches,


displays, I/O connectors, keyboards and other components. They will probably need to be printed with legends and logos and they may have to be finished in a non-standard colour to meet corporate or product branding requirements. To modify a standard enclosure to meet the requirements of a project, the purchaser has three


choices. 1) Purchase standard


products, either directly from the manufacturer or through distribution, and then modify them as required in-house. However, many electronic OEMs may not have the plant, equipment, expertise or interest in undertaking machining and painting procedures in their own premises. If there is in-house capability, to modify the housing as a part


40 February 2025 Components in Electronics


of the overall assembly process could be the best way to proceed. However, more standard units than are actually required will have to be purchased to allow for set- up procedures and wastage. 2) Buy standard products and outsource the modification processes to external contractors. In this scenario, there are the additional costs, time penalties and logistics complications associated with managing the process of sub-contracting, often to multiple suppliers, potentially further increasing the costs as each process will require extra units to allow for first- offs and set up wastage. 3) By far the best option is for the original manufacturer to provide a modified enclosure configured to the specific requirements of the project. With this option, there is no need to over- order to allow for set-up and wastage quantities. Arguably, given that the original manufacturer is best positioned to understand its own products, potentially expensive problems can be avoided by early discussions during the initial design phase. It is certainly of great benefit to involve the standard enclosure manufacturer as early as possible in the development cycle. While many international standards, such as Eurocard,


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