Case study · 2025
UL 508A control box for a robotic work cell on a deployment deadline
Robotics / automation OEM (robotic work cell for an end customer). Scope: electrical design, UL 508A panel build with customer-supplied components, UL field inspection, expedited delivery.
The challenge
A robotics company was getting a work cell ready to ship to its customer. It needed a UL 508A control box to go with the cell, and the cell could not be commissioned on site without it. The customer had its own bill of materials, much of it components it would supply and that could not be substituted. The enclosure envelope was fixed: 24" wide, about 30" tall and 12" deep, with every connector on the bottom face set back at least 80 mm from the front.
What we did
- Two ways to buy it. We quoted an expedited path and a standard-lead-time path, cross-referencing the parts we would supply to find in-stock options for every item. The customer chose the expedited build.
- Designed around the customer's kit. The box houses:
- a SICK safety controller with its I/O module (FX3-XTIO) and fieldbus gateway;
- a safety relay and a safety radar sensor controller;
- two customer-specified PLCs.
Our scope added the 24 VDC power supply, the Ethernet switch, terminal blocks, and door-mounted pushbuttons and a panel-mount USB charger, laid out around the customer's tablet HMI. The bottom face carries a bulkhead connector field (M12, M8 and RJ45) for the vision camera, IO-Link master, 7th-axis servo, safety devices and robot-controller I/O.
- Drawings first. The customer signed off on our drawing set. We checked the components they shipped against the bill of materials before the build, and issued revised drawings when the design changed.
- A late addition built in. An additional power supply the customer requested partway through went into the same assembly, not a separate one.
- UL inspection and release. A UL field engineer inspected the finished box in our shop. It carries a UL-compliant switch-rated plug-and-receptacle power inlet and a dedicated 2 A ABB breaker for the door USB port.
- Straight to the site. It shipped next-day air the same day, directly to the location where the cell was being commissioned, and arrived the next morning.
The result
The control box reached the commissioning site the morning after it left our shop. The customer's team wrote back to thank us "for the push to get this to us."
What it shows: UL 508A panel work around a customer-supplied safety and control kit, tight mechanical constraints, UL field inspection in our own shop, and a build-to-ship turnaround timed to an OEM's deployment.