Spelsberg: The Savile Row of enclosure specification
Sometimes a standard product exactly meets your needs. However, occasionally, only a bespoke solution will do. The middle ground is customisation of a standard product. Electrical enclosure specialist, Spelsberg UK, has developed its customisation services to an incredibly high level; so can produce solutions to exacting briefs – often with virtually no lead time and no minimum order quantity.
There may have been a time where electrical engineering was leisurely and unhurried, but nowadays there are often critical timeframes, which suggests an increasing preference for off-the-shelf enclosures. However, many modern electrical projects have some sort of unique characteristic that makes a standard enclosure less than ideal.
An enclosure manufacturer that tried to cater for every need with a standard product would have an unfeasibly large catalogue – and stockholding costs to match. At the same time, costs for tooling a bespoke enclosure mean that for this to be economic, tens of thousands of each design may have to be made and sold.
Spelsberg, for example, stocks a range of standard enclosure that covers some 4,000 variants and associated accessories. But even with such a large range, they find there are always enquiries that can’t be easily met with a standard product. It has therefore ensured that rapid customisation of enclosures to users’ specific requirements is viable thanks to dedicated design, customisation and assembly services.
It’s true that with the variety of products available today you can always find a standard product which can work with your design, but there will always be compromises involved. For instance it may be a bit too large or too small than is ideal, or the entry solutions or internal mounting options may not fit the brief. Such compromises can result in an ugly appearance, technical issues and even added costs.
Clearly, customising an enclosure to fit a given application is an option with a lot of merit. Today customisation can be done quickly and cheaply, provided the enclosure manufacturer is set up for such operations and has the skills, experience and confidence to guarantee a successful outcome.
Typically the customisation requires the use of CNC machinery, which reduces the costs of traditional tooling and labour so significantly that customised enclosures may cost just a few pence more per unit than an off-the-shelf choice. Further, the costs of customisation are often immediately recouped because the installation time is reduced compared to working with a non-ideal enclosure.
