Custom NEMA Enclosures: How To Create and Order from Hubbell

Suppose I need a 16 by 16 by 8 inch enclosure and I want Hubble to cut all of the holes for me. How do I do that? Easy. Any enclosure that supports custom hole patterns will have this “Customize” button on the screen. If you just want a blank, unmodified enclosure just enter the quantity here and go check out normally. But, If you want Hubble to cut the custom holes for you, then click on the CUSTOMIZE button which only appears if you are logged in. You can see this video, a list of your current projects or exit back to the store. We’re already watching the video so we’ll just skip that and go straight to the project list. Enter a project name and an e-mail address where you want notifications and approvals to be sent. Down here you will see a list of all of your past projects. You can see that I have one test project I did previously, so if I wanted to order another one of those I would just enter the quantity here and add to cart. Down here are some important notes. If you click on this one, it takes you to this page where you can see a list of all of the enclosures that currently support customization. This note down here reminds us that it is important to understand that custom enclosures are made directly from sheet metal – they don’t modify already completed enclosures – even if they are in stock. Your cutouts are added as part of the manufacturing flow as the enclosure is made, they aren’t added afterwards. Which means your holes get the same finish and paint and everything else as the rest of the enclosures for a truly professional looking enclosure. That’s the good news. The bad news is your custom enclosure will be part of whatever the current manufacturing flow is, right? So if there is currently a back log in manufacturing, your enclosure will come out of that queue just like any other enclosure. So just beware that your lead time depends on the current manufacturing load at the factory. Hit the “Start a new project button” and just like that we’re now in the enclosure customization tool. You can SAVE and SAVE-AS. This green check mark is the one you hit when you are ready to submit your drawing for approval so don’t click that yet! This selects which side of the enclosure you want to view. This allows you to align cutouts – we don’t have any cutouts yet so we’ll come back to that one. This selects the type of cutout – a Pushbutton, a rectangular DIN, or an Operator interface – and this selects the size of that type of cutout. For example, let’s select a pushbutton, and a 20mm hole size. To place that on the enclosure, click the placement button and click where you want that hole placed. You can then drag that hole where ever you want it – the coordinates down here in the lower left corner update as you drag. Can you type in the coordinates directly? Sure! Let’s put this at 5 inches and 5 inches and hit OK. The origin is always in the lower left corner, so this button is 5 inches over and 5 inches up. You can also see that by turning on the coordinates for this part. Select the part and hit “show active” to see the coordinates for the currently selected part or hit show all to see coordinates for all the holes on this face. This guy lets you flip a part – which makes no sense on a round hole, so let’s get something else. How about a 1/8th DIN cutout. Click the placement button and then click on the enclosure. I want that centered at 8 by 10 inches and hit the ok check mark to do it. The coordinates of all holes are always the CENTER of the hole. We really wanted this to be horizontal, so let’s flip it by selecting it, the outline turns blue, and then click on this button. We can also select the angle here. Now, I don’t actually need that hole, so I’ll just select it, and hit this red X to delete it. Let’s add a cutout for a C-more HMI that’s a 6 inch panel. Click the placement button and drop it on the screen. Drag it to where ever you want or enter the coordinates manually. I want it 8 inches over and 10 inches up. And let’s flip that to horizontal. Let’s add a couple more buttons … and let’s align this one to the left side of the c-more cutout, this one to the right side and this one to the center. To align an object, select the alignment type you want – this little check box tells us alignment is enabled. Select the base cutout that you want to align everything else too. It turns green to remind you it’s the base object. Now select the objects you want to align to this green object. Click away to turn off alignment – the check box clears – select the right alignment – right alignment is now enabled. Select the base object – it turns green. Select the object we want to align to that. One more time. Click away to disable alignment. Choose center. Select the C-more cutout as the base object. By the way, if you change your mind and want a different base object, just click away to disable alignment, re-enable alignment and select the new base object. Now we didn’t want to do that, so I’ll click away, re-enable and select the C-more cutout as the base object, then select this cutout to center align it to the C-more cutout. You can still drag objects while in this mode. Click on them again to align them as long as the alignment mode is enabled. Now let’s align these two buttons with this one. Click away to finish the center alignment. Change to middle alignment. Select the first button as the base object, and then select the other two to align them to it. Another way to align objects is to use the grid. Let’s click away to finish the alignment tool and turn on the grid. Enter the grid size you want here and click the OK check mark. The grid always starts at the origin. Any cutouts you add now will always align with the nearest grid intersection. Can we use the alignment tool while in grid mode? Sure – and note that alignment still uses the green object as the alignment guide – not the grid. Again, this button shows the cutout coordinates for all the holes on this face relative to the lower left origin. And this shows everything in metric. And of course, you can do everything we’ve shown here to any side of the enclosure, up to the maximum of 25 cutouts. Suppose you aren’t done but need to go do something else for a while. Well, just hit save … it saves the design. So if we exit – we already saved the changes – we can come back anytime by clicking on this edit button and we’re right back where we were. This dashed line is the maximum allowable cutout area. You won’t be allowed to go past that dashed line. The tool also has minimum clearances for cutouts. If you try to put a cutout too close to another, you’ll see a red interference line pop up. Please understand that these red interference lines are just allowing for cabinet integrity – they leave enough metal so no portion of the cabinet will be too weak. They DON’T show you interferences for parts you plan to use. For example, suppose you add a big red 60mm button here for an ESTOP. The hole fits just fine from a cabinet integrity check, but when you go to mount the button, it might crash into the button next to it. Or maybe you put a button here and forget to take into account the width of the C-more HMI’s bezel. Or maybe you’re planning on using a fancy nameplate of some kind. Or maybe you put something here and then on the side put something here. Will they interfere inside the cabinet? This tool has no way of knowing what you plan to put there so you need to be extra careful to double and triple check for interferences on the parts you plan to use before you submit this design. AutomationDirect won’t be able to honor the return policy if you simply forgot to take something into account. Well, once you are happy with the design, click the green check mark. Verify that this IS the email you want the approval notification to go to and hit OK. This is fully automated so you should get a reply within a couple minutes that looks like this. Once you are happy with everything, click here to approve the design. Once you do that, if you exit the cutout tool and look at the project list, you see that you can now purchase that box with the cutouts. Just enter the quantity, add to cart and proceed with your purchase like you would any other part. Don’t add a number here – this is for ordering blank boxes. Your enclosure with the holes in it is already in the shopping cart. Click on the plus sign and you see the details of the order. We mentioned at the beginning of this video that you just click on the Customize button to start the process. If you just want to go to the tool directly, then go to the Ordering Tools Menu and select the Customized enclosures tool. This tool only shows up in this menu IF you are logged into the store. On this page you can see all the enclosures that currently support customize holes and you can even watch this video. If you have any questions, please contact AutomationDirect’s free award winning support team during regular business hours. They will be happy to help you. And don’t forget the forums. There are lots of folks there that love to share their years of experience. Just don’t post any questions there intended for AutomationDirect’s support team – they don’t monitor the forums on a regular basis.