NEMA 4 HMI - Outdoor Application

[CtrlSystemsEng]

I am installing an HMI in the door of a NEMA 4 enclosure. The panel will be located outdoors. Most of the NEMA 4 rated HMI's that I've come across are rated for indoor use only. I assume that sunlight glare and UV damage are the main reasons for limiting them to indoor.

Anyone have any experience or ideas on what the best, and lowest cost, solution would be for adapting this HMI for outdoor use without derating the enclosure? The HMI is pretty basic. Using it to start/stop a couple of motors and monitor some flowrates and pressures. I'm even thinking that monochrome will suffice. Thanks.

 

[itsmoked]

That's true. No matter where you put it outdoors you should provide a sun shade. If not, they can get so hot they fail because the LCD chemistry goes out of spec. Think what an LCD in the sun is! They make solar cookers with a sheet of thin glass over a box. They exceed 200F!

This is why they are being constrained to indoors.

Reconfigure your design so sunlight never hits the unit and then use any NEMA 4 unit you want. If low temps are a possibility add a thermostatically controlled bar heater somewhere.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[ScottyUK]

Certainly don't use the A-B Panelview 550 in sunlight: the UV light degrades the screen until it becomes opaque. That's from bitter experience with a badly-designed packaged system!

We ended up installing an isolated line driver, ran a hundred yards of twisted pair cable to another line driver installed in a nearby modular building and mounted the HMI in a protected environment.


----------------------------------

If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[jraef]

Look at this product from a company called Aaeon. We just started working with them on some projects where we needed NEMA 4X outdoor displays on mobile machinery. The Fox product line is a very robust outdoor rated HMI. Not cheap, but very rugged. They called it "Vandal Resistant" when they showed it to us, but I hate to create challenges for vandals...

http://www.aaeon.com/PD_Products_De...C8302A47D18A_58973BB4FBE24DAF8A_TW_UTF-8.html

They have a 15" version as well.



"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe." -- Abraham Lincoln
For the best use of Eng-Tips, please click here -> faq731-376