GHANA
What is the difference between enclosure and cabinet?
Studio Content
05/04/2024
What difference between a cabinet and an enclosure? Let's take a moment to address this question clearly!
In electrical discussions, there is often confusion about when to use "enclosure" versus "cabinet."
Are these terms interchangeable, referring to the same thing, or do they signify different electrical items?
When you look up the dictionary definitions of these two terms, you realize that both enclosure and cabinet refer to "something that encloses or stores something".
If we want to go further into electrical stuff, the terms enclosure and cabinet in electrical refer to a structure and components that surround, involve, save and protect electrical components. All for the purpose of protection, measurement, control, signalization and automation in electrical and communication installations.
In fact, the difference between enclosure and cabinet strongly depends of the nomenclature and the custom uses of these words in terms of a specific application and also, of the specific nomination that a company brand uses in catalogues for its product identification.
Let focus on the Legrand brand!
Enclosures for Legrand refer specially to power application ranges for example the Legrand XL³ range that was designed to meet the needs of all power distribution requirements. This also includes the Plexo, Atlantic and Marina ranges.
Cabinets, on the other hand, refer mainly to identify a type of enclosure that is used for IT applications, in other words, structured cabling cabinets that are used to save racks, patch cords, patch panels and any kind of appliances for this purpose. In the case of Legrand brand, we are here talking about the Legrand Server and Network Cabinet range, as for example the LCS³ range of products.
Finally, we can conclude that the difference between the terms enclosure and cabinet boils down to a matter of convention, which varies depending on the specific business context or industry they are used in. However, strictly speaking, there is no significant disparity in their definitions.
However, it is very important to remember that both enclosure and cabinet exclusively refer to the structure containing electrical or communication components within them. The components themselves are not encompassed by these terms. Conversely, when using the terms board or panel board, we are specifying the complete assembly, consisting of both the enclosure and all internal components.