Written by Scott Mulholland, Product Manager- Industrial Components

In these uncertain times, now might be an opportunity to look at a different way of doing things.

As the world wakes up and global demand accelerates, many manufacturers are experiencing significant challenges in being able to meet customer’s expectations. It feels like the problems are coming from all angles, global supply chain disruption, raw material shortages, extreme weather disruption. The list goes on.  Phoenix Contact is no different to our peers in seeing the step change in demand. Where we do differ, however, certainly in our din rail terminal offer, is that even if we cannot offer your first choice terminal (e.g a 2,5 grey screw terminal), we very often can offer a near solution that will do the same job with no loss of effectiveness or reliability. We could, in place of the 2,5 grey screw terminal, offer, say, a 2,5 spring, push in or IDC (insulation displacement connection).

Written by Scott Mulholland, Product Manager- Industrial Components

In retrofit activity, its very easy to incur material costs and labour charges that can ramp up alarmingly from initial estimations. Replacing the terminals and conductors in a busy cabinet, junction box or machine could prove a serious undertaking. Therefore, replacing your traditional screw terminals with a more modern spring based push in terminal might be an initially attractive proposition.  It then it dawns on you that the benefits of speed of installation, vibration proof etc that come with fitting a push in ‘PT’ terminal may be negated by the need to replace each individual conductor/wire to achieve the extra wire length (say 40mm for arguments sake) to be able ‘loop’ over into the top of the terminal. You would need to do this as ‘PT’ push in terminals are top entry, whereas screw terminals are side entry. This could be very costly both in time and cash.