I love when I stumble upon great engineering resources just by digging through websites of companies I don’t know much about. Like this morning, when I was looking at The Okonite Co.’s website. The more than 130-year old company makes 300 V to 345 kV insulated products for industrial, utilities, renewable energy and railroad and transit.
The company’s Engineering Technical Center encompasses data sheets, selection charts and more from its Engineering Handbook, and allows website users to review data critical to specifying cables. Users can download the 65-page Handbook or click on sections that they need to review specifically.
One category that caught my eye was its chart on jacket materials selection. It is a simple review of the mechanical, environmental and other impacts on various jacketing materials, including PVC, Polyethylene, Neoprene, Chlorosulphonated Polyethylene, and Thermoplastic CPE. It gives ratings of exceptional, excellent, good, fair, and poor.
For example, all five offer good or excellent mechanical ratings under the mechanical categories, except for Polyethylene and Thermoplastic CPE when it comes to flexibility; they both earned a fair rating. But when it comes to environmental impacts, the ratings are across the board, with a great deal more fair and poor ratings for conditions such as flame, petroleum oils, Esters, Halogenated Hydrocarbons, and more. However, moist conditions and mineral acids don’t have much of an impact on any of the materials, as they all have good to exceptional ratings in those categories.
Charts like this make product selection a lot simpler. Users don’t have to dig through numerous product lines; all they need to do is look at a chart such as this one, determine which type of jacketing material works from there, and then look at only those products available.
Other selection data available in Okonite’s Engineering Technical Center includes information on conductor stranding, dc resistance, voltage regulation, shielding, ampacity tables, and more.
The Okonite Co.
www.okonite.com
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