Written by Gary Nelson, Senior Product Manager- Device Connections
When you’re looking for a cable assembly to be a specific length, a printed circuit terminal block to be marked or you want to create an electronics enclosure solution where do you start?
As a design engineer looking for interconnect and enclosure products you sometimes need something a bit different to suit your project. It may be a case of simply changing the colour of a printed circuit board (PCB) terminal block to help differentiate it from others or possibly having numbers or letters marked on the surface to help clearly show wiring positions. With electronics enclosures you may be looking to have holes milled to accommodate data ports or LEDs and you could be looking for printing perhaps with a company logo.
The ability to create customised products no matter how small the change required is can be daunting, very time consuming and potentially come with large minimum order quantities. It’s therefore sometimes not pursued by design engineers as the prospect of delays in prototyping a new product outweighs the benefit of having the solution they really wanted.
At Phoenix Contact we have help at hand with our online configurators which enable you to design and create the product you need quickly and easily all with visual aids and easy to follow steps. You will find configurators for PCB terminal blocks, cable assemblies, electronics enclosures and many more.
As an example the electronics enclosure configurator uses drag and drop functionality with 3D graphics making your creation visible to you as you progress through each step. Once you have completed your design you will receive a project reference number enabling you to e-mail this to a colleague or your customer allowing them to see what you have created. A bill of materials and CAD file download showing the PCB shape and location is also available as part of this configurator.
So the next time you are thinking of creating a variant of a standard product take a look at our website and check out our configurators as I’m sure you’ll welcome what you find there.
For more information, visit our website or contact Gary on 07780 483099 or email gnelson@phoenixconact.co.uk
