Customised enclosures offer a speedy solution

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 5, 2005

The latest development in smoke detectors has been designed and brought to market in half the normal time using customised polycarbonate enclosures from Spelsberg UK.

The latest development in smoke detectors has been designed and brought to market in half the normal time using customised polycarbonate enclosures from Spelsberg UK.

After modifying a standard Spelsberg TK unit for the prototype, a UK specialist in advanced smoke detection systems found that Spelsberg could supply enclosures milled and drilled to their specifications within 48h, significantly reducing the time taken to develop the prototype into a market ready product.

The customer is one of Europe's leading manufacturers of aspirated smoke devices (ASDs); these are discreet and highly sensitive smoke detection systems commonly used in museums, galleries and stately homes.

An ASD operates by continually pumping air samples from a room or building using capillary tubes and testing for smoke particulates using a laser detection system.

The company specialises in the design and fitting of these sophisticated systems but needed to expand the product range to include a lower cost unit in order to introduce its advanced detection technology to a wider market.

Graham Fox, Managing Director of Spelsberg UK explains: "The majority of applications do not warrant such complex and sensitive systems, so the company developed a new detection device based on the Spelsberg enclosure that would be less costly than the specialist laser models, but still highly functional".

"The resulting new models combine aspirated technology that can be integrated with a variety of standard point detector systems, to provide a robust and comprehensive detection solution".

The Spelsberg TK enclosures were chosen because they offered the benefit of ingress protection to IP66, even after modification, making the new device ideal for harsh environments such as prisons, underground stations and livestock buildings.

Engineers selected the TK range because "they were impact resistant; the enclosures were large enough to fit up to two point detectors inside them and could be easily modified to incorporate the required circuitry".

Added benefits came when the company found that bespoke units could be ordered from Spelsberg UK and supplied in 48h, a fraction of the normal delivery time.

When the purchasing manager ordered the initial boxes, he comments: "We had no idea of the fantastic support service that Spelsberg offered".

"We had taken a standard polystyrene TK enclosure and had to adapt the unit to fit pipe inlets, mountings and entries, now that Spelsberg supply a cost effective solution to the problem of customisation, we are one step closer to full production".

Graham Fox at Spelsberg explains: "A new CNC milling centre installed at our Telford headquarters allows us to customise all sizes of aluminium, polycarbonate and polystyrene enclosures with a turnaround time of just 48h".

"Slots can be cut in the sides of boxes to fit specialist cable glands and entries, while extra fixing holes can be drilled for nonstandard applications".

"Any combination of company logos, product names, wiring diagrams, safety information and routine junction labelling can also be applied to lids or other external surfaces".

The machining centre also allows Spelsberg to quickly produce one or many thousands of bespoke enclosures.

The customer benefits from being able to obtain low cost prototypes without having to place orders for large numbers of the units and fast turnaround on large batch orders.

Each enclosure template also is stored on disk at Spelsberg, making re-ordering simple, quick and cost effective.