Electrical Industry Articles and Stories

Looking through a manufacturer’s online enclosure catalog recently, I came across a term I hadn’t heard before. Now, I’m not a contractor, so I likely haven’t seen as many of these listings as you might have. But I am a journalist who has covered the construction industry for several decades, and the term “mild steel” stuck out to me when it showed up as a material option for the maker’s broad range of enclosure offerings.

Earlier this year at the Light + Building 2018 trade show in Frankfurt, Germany, Philips Lighting announced a string of new initiatives aimed at the transition to more LED lamps as well as the inclusion of LEDs into the “Internet of Things” (IoT) in homes and buildings worldwide.

First the company announced IoT platform called Interact, designed to handle data collected from connected light points, sensors, devices and systems.

Lighting automation has bells and whistles, but a lighting contactor is necessary to switch the actual lighting circuits. Properly selecting lighting contactors can save installation and maintenance costs. What are some of the important considerations in addition to the correct voltage and current?

Opti-Core® IndustrialNet™ Polymer Coated Fiber (PCF) Cables are designed with technicians in mind, and are ideal for installation in harsh, industrial environments. Large diameter, high strength and highly durable graded-index, PCF Cables are suitable for applications that demand high mechanical integrity and reliability. They are easy to prepare and terminate using the LC Connector and PCF Termination Kit. Training takes minutes so it’s suitable for technicians lacking experience with fiber optic cables.

Panduit® StrongHold™ Electrical/Network Supports and Fasteners provide a reliable, high-quality solution for routing and securing power and communication cabling within commercial and industrial facilities to reduce the time and cost associated with cable management installation. These dependable supports and fasteners are designed to meet the regulatory requirements of NFPA 70 (National Electric Code), UL standards and other USA/Canadian building codes.

The Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) uses 24VDC input/output to provide 35W of power and 5 to 15 minutes Hold Time and is designed for critical networking and control applications such as industrial managed switches and human machine interfaces (HMI’s). The Industrial UPS uses Ultracapacitors instead of batteries, eliminating the #1 cause of conventional UPS failures, which lowers the risk of downtime - and there’s no need for costly and time consuming maintenance.