Tag Archives: engineering materials

Ways on Properly Selecting a Good-Sized Server Racks

Electronics Enclosure Engineering Blog Engineering Materials No Comments
Engineering Blog, Engineering Materials, Electrical Enclosure, Electrical Boxes, Electronics Enclosure, Server Racks,

The Three-Phase power technology for server racks is not very exclusive to operating remote power management products. Actually, there are several solutions that can be accommodated by this technology. When you compare it to a single-phase power, it utilizes a fewer circuit making electricity in power loading more balanced. It also decreases the number of needed PDUs in order to power equipment. It can also significantly reduce the amperage being used inside the server rack cabinets.

To further explain this topic, there is a traditional rack environment that has 20-amp circuits that are going to be required to provide 64 amps of available power. Assuming the maximum power load of about 80%. In a contrasting scenario, the 3-phase circuit can give power up to 51.6 amps per circuit. That is equivalent to 82 amps of available power. It will only require 2 circuits in order to accommodate the 80% load.

The cost-efficiency required in order to run a 3-Phase power is very important. The electricity experts have an estimation that in the near future, the cost to acquire electricity (compared to recent costs) has the possibility to rise by 10%. When it comes to IT budgets it can get to 20-30%.

The other electricity or power-related required aspects should include the number of outlets that the server rack will be needing. Including the plug/receptacle requirements as well as the redundancy requirements.

When it comes to selecting a server rack with the appropriate, sufficient internal space to be able to accommodate your equipment is needed. Also, it ensures that the server rack has ample space to house the equipment that will be needed for future expansions. Especially when there are unplanned purchases of additional equipment.

The server rack mount equipment is being measured using the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) standards. The standard measurement is one “Rack Unit” that has the equivalence of 1.75” in height. Always be aware that the available space for accessories – the environmental monitoring devices, remote power management devices, LCD monitors and battery back-up – might be important.

With this example, if an engineer needs to accommodate at least 20 2U rack servers, they are more likely to buy a server rack with a height of 44U in able for them to accommodate all the needed accessories. These can be the 1U patch panel, as well as the 2U UPS battery back-up. The internal height of the server rack is being measured by getting the measurements from the tallest point of any side of the rack server up to the bottom of the chassis. The internal depth that is being measured internally is being done on front and rear doors. In addition to this, the internal width is being measured from the other side of the panel to the other.

Improved Graphics Department Output Contributes to the Decision Making of Enclosure Manufacturing Companies

Electronics Enclosure Engineering Blog Engineering Materials No Comments
Electronics Enclosure, Engineering Blog, Engineering Materials, Graphics Department,

Now that the winter is over, the seasons are starting to transition from being very dreary gray to bright colorful spring and summer. Who would not be excited right? With this in mind, I guess every woman like to brighten up their wardrobe. We should start putting away the bulky, drab winter sweaters –including the overstuffed coat- and we should start pulling out the floral dresses, including the crisp white shoes.

Most of the common colors for spring and summer are the: yellows, oranges, and whites. It can shine and glow against the beautiful backdrops of spike green grass and the turquoise blue skies. With this in mind, the natural colors from spring are the best and great improvement over the winter blues.

With these changes in color schemes of things, enclosure manufacturing companies also knows how to give color and various styles to any class of any given standard enclosure. One of the customization services of an electronics enclosure is giving permanent printing graphics that can be put on any type of enclosure surfaces.

And in order for these companies to give you the only best color schemes available for enclosure printing, they should implement certain developments in their graphics department.

The first of these processes would require a double-hit process. This is very much alike in applying a secondary coating for painting your walls. Companies does not only apply one strike of color but they apply a secondary coating when printing one enclosure. Now this makes the color of the printing appear the brightest especially on the finished product.

As many of the electronics enclosure that are available in black material, we recently just found out that printing may appear in lackluster. Like a dark background that was shown through the ink. In able to fortify the text or graphics with the use of the second hit of ink, the color is then now accentuated. Gradually, the ink pops against the darkness.

Even on white or gray surfaces of electronics enclosure, companies should double hit the process. The printed colors will start to stand out and it makes it a bit easier to read the graphics to be able to be recognized.

The Benefits of Having Improved Reliability of Speed Distribution and Automated Networks

Electronics Enclosure Engineering Materials No Comments
engineering, engineering materials, The Benefits of Having Improved Reliability of Speed Distribution and Automated Networks

In a private network setting, there are no unauthorized traffic that can travel around the network. With this in mind, this can totally eliminate the risk of having unsolicited traffic that can come from external sources. All of the data that is sent to and from several devices is now configured to a set private network that is segregated and separated from other sources of traffic. However, in such a private network like this, the customer can get a pool of set machine to machine (MSM) data plans that is designed for the DA application.

In conjunction with these type of applications, different cellular modems and routers are now designed through the solution given by the supplier and now being used for the IPsec tunnels, firewalls, and special filtering to have different sets of data to be securely transmitted between data and field devices. The MSM data plans for different DA solutions are designed to have a well defined and tested ways to support various types of applications.

For example, a manufacturer’s system may opt to use the small Ethernet IEC 61850 Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE) type of messages to be able to communicate and transfer the information from peer to peer between the pole-mounted field controller devise or servers. This happens on the cost-efficient machine to machine data plans that are build to support different applications such as DTT, FLISR, and ATS that happens in different private cellular networks.

Several DA systems heavily depend on the available communication lines to be able to perform as it was originally designed for. As a failsafe, once the system successfully detects that a certain model was unusually disconnected from its cellular network, the system will successfully automatically give notification to the operator when the link is down. This service notification will give support to the customers to be able to have a better maintenance in their communication system lines that will variably support OT applications.

For the progressive electrical utility, a good combination of the cellular communications and the recent approaches to the new distribution systems feeder protection and automation stars gathering improved system reliability. On the other hand, the traditional approach for this system comprises of two distinctly different system functions: protection first and then automation.

The recent protection system should disconnect from the faulty networks that coordinates the overcurrent tripping that has auto-reclosing actions. Once the automated system successfully locates the faulty segment from the feeder, it isolates the faulted segments and it now executes the automatic closure of the field then it transfers switch to be able to provide the alternate energy from a different power source to functioning feeder segments. This is usually described as self-healing.

The recent approach disregards the complexity of adaptation of different coordinated overcurrent settings on several devices once the topology undergoes change. It then will be executed by the automated system. For this to happen, the automated and protection sytems should be closely monitored and coordinated in different actions – both in protection and automation. This helps to have an effective operation and protection for these types of automation actions to be executed successfully.

How to Have Control System with Style? Part 1

Electronics Enclosure Engineering Materials No Comments
electronics enclosure, engineering materials, Innovations, NEMA ratings, technology

When a design engineer would like to implement and design a control system with integration project, he/she should start with a set of goals or specifications. These goals should determine the preferences of the end-user and this should be communicated efficiently to ensure that final output satisfies the expectations of all stakeholders in a company. This gives of a good start for any design engineer when specifications are carefully developed and implemented. It ensures the highest success probability of the project and it makes sure that in the long haul, the control system can be maintained and operates efficiently.

When designing a new control system, the easiest one to develop are the hard-side specifications. Why? Because there are many resources available for this one. Pre-built sections for controllers and software packages in a control system are in the resources of Construction Specifications Institute (CSI). Once an engineer cannot find the detail that he/she desires, other control system hardware and software sellers can also provide detailed sections about hard-side specifications. Once the end user are looking for bids from several seller or vendors of this system, the specifications the company would like to have must be carefully developed and consider so that these can be met by several bidders.

The real challenge comes when a company or an end user would like to set the specifications on the soft-side of controls. To guide them in the decision-making process, they should start with a few basic questions:

What design should be considered for the screen?

How is the controller is going to be used by the maintenance or engineering personnel?

The structure of tags and operating pump colors are hardly addressed in the specifications. These are the elements which determines the UI (user interface) of the control system.

Once these guidelines are answered, the next step of action is to start the layout with a style guide. Style guides has been existing for a very long time on other fields. There are The Associated Press Stylebook, MLA Handbook for research papers, and in marketing field where fonts, colors, and logos for branding are also guided & monitored across all social media platforms. In this scenario, style guide is also appropriate and applicable.

With this in mind, there is not limitation what elements and considerations should be added in a control system style guide. However, the following are six areas where there should be standardization of style and these elements has proven to have the most return on investment:

  1. Color

Like the usual traffic lights, red signifies stop and green means go. With this in mind, mechanical systems and electrical systems also applies the same principles. The main goal of color coding is to keep the operators and personnel safe in company operations. The color does not only signify coding but it should be well implemented in the company processes.

To start the process of deciding which colors to use for guidelines, determine the list of colors used in a facility where the control system will be used. Look for painted process pipes, pilot lights, control panels, stack lights, etc. The colors used should be familiar with the personnel for a more efficient use of the control guide and better operations.