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Best Practices for Selecting an Off-the-Shelf Enclosure
Randall Dennis, President
New Age Enclosures

In today’s market, electrical engineers and marketing personnel are faced with a growing selection of off-the-shelf enclosures for their electronic equipment. This may sound like a nice problem to have because choices are good. Right? But this may be a problem if it is not addressed early in the development process.

Historically the number of standard enclosures has been limited and the designs have been quite simple. Due to limitations in the manufacturing process they were square or rectangular shaped with few color choices.

New Options for Enclosure Selection
With manufacturers developing lines of market-ready enclosures, the enclosure market is taking on an improved form. Now electronic enclosures boast ergonomically contoured surfaces and enhanced aesthetics. New Age is even capable of producing their entire enclosure line in any color a customer may want.

This has not changed the “when form should lead function” selection process. New Age Enclosures recommends a reverse selection process for selecting electronic enclosures. Typically, when selecting a custom enclosure for a new application, it is standard practice for the development team to develop their board, populate it with electronic components, prove the software and functionality, and then consider the design and shape of the enclosure to encase their new electronic device. After all, form follows function, right? Designers and marketing teams should consider reversing that process when developing a program they know will run in lower volumes and therefore financially require an off-the-shelf enclosure.

Although the selection within the standard enclosure market is growing, there will still be limitations and challenges that the development team will encounter. The enclosures they have to choose from may be too long or short, too wide or narrow, or perhaps too short or tall to accommodate their PCB. If this is discovered after the PCB has been established, it can cause many headaches, development delays and may lead to cost-related over runs.

The simple solution is to select the enclosure earlier in the process. If the design team feels this is putting the cart before the horse, at least suggest to them to allow the horse to stand side by side with the cart. This can be uncomfortable due to a natural resistance to change. The engineers may have previously worked on different, higher volume programs that provided the comfort of designing the PCB fi rst and validating the components on that board with a budget to build a custom enclosure. But with standard enclosure products, they may run into the fact that the required size and shape does not exist and modifying that enclosure to fi t the application may prove cost prohibitive.

Best Practices to Selecting an Off-the-Shelf Enclosure
1: Identify the program requirements (i.e. developing a transceiver that will be outside and requires its own power source).

2: Initiate a web search on sites such as New Age Enclosures to determine which plastic enclosure manufacturer provides an enclosure that meets the requirements such as NEMA compliant and gasketed battery compartment. Because this enclosure application will be outside in the elements, it will inevitably require a mounting method so the search should include a method to attach the unit to a wall, a pole or other substrate.

3: During the search, the development team finds out quickly that there may be a very limited number of enclosures meeting their exact requirements. Finding this out early in the process will help prevent many of the headaches, time delays and cost overruns. Samples of standard product can be ordered from a value-added distributor such as TLC Electronics. The samples can then be reviewed by the development team prior to having a major investment in tooling and prototypes. Distributors often have the standard enclosures in stock and can quickly provide development teams with samples and material specifications. The numerous benefits include selection of the enclosure within the category that best meets the application requirements allowing the designers to know in advance that the case size and layout can influence the electronics design. This process can lead to selection of the most cost-effective solution.

4: With an enclosure in hand that meets their application, the designer can proceed with the PCB development knowing they have an affordable, in-stock solution. In following these steps, the designers are able to quickly establish the PCB footprint and the mounting hole locations. Sizing a PCB to fit an enclosure is far less expensive than designing and building a custom box to fi t the PCB.

5: This process should lead to satisfied engineers and marketing personnel because they all had an opportunity to have voice in the selection process on the front end as opposed to being stuck with an enclosure only because it was the only box that fits the board. Or worse yet, be stuck with the cost of a complete custom box that created cost overruns.

6: The marketing staff will then be able to work on finalizing the outside appearance of their end product. Companies like New Age Enclosures are able to print the company’s logo or other artwork directly onto the case for a true market-ready product.

New Age Enclosure designs are to the electronics industry as Apple is to the computer industry. Their engineers produce market ready designs sized to fi t today’s electronics. New Age Enclosures is a division of Alltec Integrated Manufacturing, Inc., a custom injection molding company. New Age Enclosures is ISO quality registered to the stringent aerospace standard AS9100B.

For additional information on this subject and specifi c electronic enclosures visit www.NewAgeEnclosures.com.