Custom Outdoor Equipment Cabinets
Telecom, utility, and energy equipment sits outside, and its cabinet has to keep rain, dust, and sun off it. K-Display makes outdoor cabinets and pedestals for the NEMA type your design names, delivered as bare shells, powder coated, or with doors hung and hardware installed.
Seams, edges, and openings
An outdoor cabinet keeps weather out of a sealed interior while letting heat and cable through. The door seam, the roof, and every opening decide whether it does: a gasket compressing on a flat land, a drip edge that sheds water past the seam, and louver, filter, and fan openings that pass air without passing rain.
Corrosion starts where the coating is thin or broken: welded seams, cut edges, and openings. Powder film thins on sharp edges and in recesses, so seam welds, edge treatment, and hole edges are set before coating.
An outdoor cabinet combines a sheltered door seam with planned vent and cable openings. The raised roof projects past the door, while the empty shell shows where equipment and entry plates will fit.
Cabinets and the parts that seal them
- Pad-mount and floor-standing cabinets
- Welded shells with gasketed doors, a base plinth or channel, anchor pattern, and lifting provisions.
- Pole and wall-mount cabinets
- Smaller shells with pole brackets, banding slots, or wall flanges, and the same drip edges and door overlaps.
- Pedestals and ground-set cabinets
- Cabinets and pedestals that take cable in from below through a base entry plate, with the base or anchor detail. Access-device pedestals are on the Gate & Access-Control Enclosures page.
- Doors, roofs, and frames
- Gasketed single or double doors with drip edges and overlaps, sun-shield and double-skin roof panels, and frames for louvers, filters, and fans, with hinges, latches, locks, and gaskets installed.
- Base frames and entry plates
- Plinths, base channels, mounting brackets, and base or gland plates with the cable openings and anchor pattern.
What decides whether the cabinet seals
- Seams, gasket lands, and drip edges
- The door seal depends on a flat gasket land and a door overlap that holds even compression. Welding distorts long doors and frames, so we weld the continuous seams first, stitch only where the design allows, and check flatness on the gasket land before coating.
- Openings and roof
- Louver, filter, fan, and heat exchanger cutouts and roof standoffs are where water finds a way in. We form drip edges and frames around each opening, hold sun-shield standoffs clear of the roof surface, and cut drain and weep holes where the roof slope sends water.
- Substrate, surface preparation, and coating
- Welding burns the zinc off pre-galvanized and galvannealed sheet at the seam, and powder thins on sharp edges. We dress welds and edges, prepare the surface to the specification, apply a repair coating to weld areas where the specification calls for one, and mask the bonding points.
- Doors, hardware, and fasteners
- Dissimilar metals in contact on a wet seam or hinge pin corrode. We check hinge, latch, and fastener materials against the shell, install hinges, latches, locks, and gaskets on the finished shell, and open and close the door before it ships.
- Mounting, lifting, and rating
- The mounting method sets the load path: anchor pattern on a pad, banding on a pole, flanges on a wall, lift points on the frame. We build the seams, gasket lands, and openings around the NEMA type and any listing the design names, and can pursue NEMA or UL certification of the design with you.
Seams first, door last
Cutting, forming, welding, coating, and hardware installation run in one shop, so seam and corner treatment and the masking plan are settled before cutting, welds are dressed before surface preparation, and the door is hung on the finished shell.
Review the design against the rating
Read the seams, gasket lands, openings, and mounting against the NEMA type and listing, and settle seam treatment, corner treatment, and masking before any panel is cut.
Cut, form, weld, and dress
Laser cut the panels and openings, form the returns, drip edges, and gasket lands, weld the seams continuous where the design calls for it, and dress welds and cut edges.
Prepare, mask, coat, and fit hardware
Prepare the surface to the specification, mask the bare points, and powder coat. Then install hinges, latches, locks, gaskets, and vent frames, hang the doors, and check door fit and latch engagement before shipment.
Start with the door seam
Show the door overlap, gasket section and latch positions together in the cabinet model. Those details establish the mating surfaces that forming, welding and coating must preserve.
The door gasket meets a flat land beneath the roof's drip edge. Keeping that land flat gives the gasket a consistent contact surface when the door closes.
What we read before we quote
A model showing the door, the openings, and the mounting is enough to start a review.
- Model or drawing
- STEP or DXF plus a PDF, material and thickness, overall dimensions, and weight.
- Door and openings
- Gasket land and drip geometry, door overlap, and the louver, filter, and fan openings from the thermal design.
- Environment and rating
- Installation location, the NEMA type, and any listing the design targets.
- Coating
- Powder product, color, gloss, film requirement, surface preparation, and the surfaces that stay bare.
- Hardware, entry, and delivery
- Hinge, latch, lock, gasket, and vent frame part numbers, base or gland plate entry, quantity, delivery date, and whether the shell ships bare, coated, or door-hung.