Switchgear housings, busbars, transformer hardware, surge arrester components, instrument transformer secondaries, and grounding hardware for utility, transmission, distribution, and industrial programs. From a custom relay enclosure to a 5,000-substation BoM — built to your voltage class and creepage envelope, not ours.
Substations and transmission hardware fail in ways production-line hardware doesn't. Dielectric stress, fault-current heating, and lifetime-corrosion compound; the parts that survive 30 years on a pole are the ones designed against all three at once.
A 95 kV BIL bushing fails the moment you let a 1 mm burr touch a corona path. We build to IEC 60664-1 / 60815 creepage envelopes from CAD onwards — surface roughness, fillet radius, electrode polish are designed in, not buffed in.
A 95 kV bushing that passes BIL on day one fails creep-current on year three in a coastal site. Hydrophobic shed geometry, silicone composite construction, and surface-finish chemistry decide where the part actually retires.
Sharp edges, gas voids, and triple-points concentrate field until they ignite. We design end-fittings, grading rings, and shed terminations against the field plot — not against the mechanical-only assembly drawing.
A switchgear, transformer-accessory, or surge-arrester BoM pulls from copper machining, plating, sheet, casting, IM, and high-creepage PCBA. You shouldn't need six suppliers — every part below ships from a single FabDigit cell.
ETP / OFHC copper busbars, transformer-bushing flanges, instrument-transformer cores. ±0.025 mm flatness on bus joints, 0.4 µm Ra polish on UHV electrode geometry.
Learn more Switchgear enclosure · cabinetAluminum and galvanized-steel switchgear cabinets, instrument-transformer enclosures, control-panel boxes. Powder-coat or epoxy-finish for tropical-class.
Learn more Epoxy / silicone insulatorsCycloaliphatic epoxy stand-offs, silicone HCR composite-shed insulators, polymer terminal-block carriers. Hydrophobicity-transfer characterised per lot.
Learn more Protection relay · merging unitHigh-creepage 4 – 12 layer PCBs for protection relays, merging units, GOOSE-class IEDs. Conformal coating + IEC 60664-1 class III creepage.
Learn more Grading-ring tooling · prototypesSLM AlSi10Mg and Inconel for grading-ring tooling, shield-electrode prototypes, and bushing-flange first-articles. SLA pattern for cast-resin moulds.
Learn more Field plot · BIL couponEmbedded HV engineer for field-plot review, BIL/lightning impulse coupon design, and creepage budgeting. We co-design grading-ring geometry against your field plot.
Learn moreWorking ranges across recent switchgear, transformer-accessory, and surge-arrester programs. Coatings row carries our moat: plating chemistries restricted on US/EU lines that our partner cells still run.
A composite of recent distribution-switchgear programs (12 – 24 kV class). Each callout is where the engineering trade-off lives, and where the moat sits.
ETP-copper laminated bus, silver-plated tap points (Ag 8 – 12 µm). ±0.025 mm flatness on the joint face. Belleville-stacked at every tap; lot-tracked torque on the M12 bolt.
Cycloaliphatic-epoxy enclosure; vacuum-bottle interface machined to ±0.02 mm. Silver-plated contact-finger cluster, oxide-controlled atmosphere assembly.
Cycloaliphatic-epoxy cast CT secondary, polished electrode geometry inside, IEC 61869 class 0.5S accuracy. Bonded-in temperature-stable winding form.
Silicone HCR composite-shed surge arrester, MOV-disk stack with electrode-end machined to Ra < 0.8 µm. End-fitting field plot verified before mould-flash.
Tinned-Cu grounding stud, copper braid bonded to a substation earth-mat. PA pull-test traceability and 25 kA / 1 s short-time rating documented per lot.
Aluminum switchgear cabinet, bead-blast finish then epoxy powder-coat. Door-bolt creepage path verified before powder.
Six parts make up the majority of the spend on a typical distribution or transmission program. Spec ranges below are working envelopes — your drawing tightens them.
Laminated ETP / OFHC copper bus, silver- or tin-plated tap zones. Machined chamfered M12 / M16 bolt-holes. Belleville-stacked joints.
Aluminum or galvanized-steel switchgear cabinet with door-bolt creepage verified. Epoxy powder-coat for tropical-class.
CNC-machined aluminum or stainless flange for transformer bushings. ±0.025 mm flatness on the seal face.
Silicone HCR composite-shed surge arrester housing with MOV-disk stack, electrode-end machined Ra < 0.8 µm.
Silver-plated Cu finger-cluster, epoxy-resin housing, weather-sealed. Cable-termination kit included.
Tinned-Cu grounding stud + copper braid + galvanized-steel earth-mat connector. Pull-test and short-time rating logged.
Click a voltage class, then click any cell in the matrix below. Each cell tells you whether that material × coating combination survives that voltage class — and what FabDigit builds at the intersection. The cells marked FAIL are there to tell you the substitution we'd recommend.
Silver-plated Cu finger-clusters — the moat of MV switchgear lifetime.
Industry-typical ranges from recent engagements. Specific commitments land in your quote.
Conventional copper bar is bought + cut + plated; CNC-cut + silver-plated copper wins on tap-point precision and durability. SLM Cu opens up for special shapes only past 50 pcs.
Three candidate insulator material families for MV / HV outdoor. Silicone composite wins on hydrophobic-transfer; epoxy wins on machinability + casting yield; porcelain wins on cost-at-scale but loses the field.
Contract-to-type-test for a 145 kV switchgear bay. Cast-resin epoxy + silver-plate parallelised; type-test campaign starts before production ramp.
Grid programs are 18 – 36 month programs whose entire cost gate is the type-test at the high-voltage laboratory. The six phases below are how we keep the design-revision loop short and the type-test campaign clean.
Drawings + STEP + voltage envelope land in our portal. A high-voltage engineer reviews them within 72 hours, flagging field-concentration risks and surface-finish callouts before quote.
Quote out in 5 – 10 days. First-article parts on a 5-axis fixture within 15 days; first-article CT/PT cast and de-moulded within 25 days. CMM report ships with the parts.
CMM, surface-roughness report, BIL-coupon, lightning-impulse coupon — all packaged with the parts. We don't self-certify; we ship evidence the HV laboratory will recognise.
On-site or remote support during BIL, lightning-impulse, and temperature-rise type-test at the HV laboratory. ECNs flow through engineering, not through silent change-orders on the next lot.
Heat-lot traceability per part, plating-bath audit per lot, cast-resin batch-cure documentation. Each ship-set ships with its DPL pack.
500 – 5,000 ship-sets / year for transmission programs, with held-inventory spares per ship-set. Long-lead lots committed 24 months forward.
Dedicated grid-hardware 5-axis CNC cell for transformer flanges, bushing seats, and bus-tap geometry. Climate-controlled to ±0.5 °C, with a coupon CMM in-line so the seal-face flatness never drifts past ±0.025 mm on long parts.
A composite of recent programs, anonymised to protect customer IP. Numbers are real ranges from the engagements they're drawn from.
The customer was renewing twelve 145 kV sub-transmission substations on a regulatory deadline. Their prior partner had failed BIL on the first type-test and lost six months to redesign; the schedule wouldn't move.
We embedded a high-voltage engineer into the early CAD phase and re-machined the bushing-flange geometry against the field plot — chamfer radius, electrode polish, and grading-ring transition all moved before the first part was cast. The cast-resin CT secondaries ran on our cycloaliphatic-epoxy line; the silver-plated finger clusters ran in parallel on the contact-plating cell.
Type-test passed on the first campaign with zero non-conformances. The 132-bay build ramped from prototype to ship-set #1 in 5 months; all 132 bays delivered 18 months from contract.
EPA / OSHA rulings since 2015 have closed dozens of US-side plating bays. Our partner plants still run them daily. The list below shows up most on substation drawings.
Hex-Cr plate > 25 µm on disconnect-switch shafts and tap-changer rods. Closed-loop bay, full neutralisation, per-lot audit.
Cyanide-bath silver for HV finger-cluster contacts. XRF per part for thickness uniformity, closed-loop water recovery.
Heavy-zinc galv for lattice towers, equipment-base steelwork, cable-tray. Per-lot zinc-bath sampling, adhesion coupons documented.
Zn-Ni for HV hardware bolts; replaces Cd / Cr⁶⁺ chromate. Cr⁶⁺-free passivation step audited per lot.
Hydrophobic outdoor cast-resin for instrument-transformer secondaries. Per-batch cure-monitor, dielectric tan-δ in-line.
Silicone HCR composite-shed bonded over an epoxy-glass core. The default HV outdoor insulator at heavy-pollution sites.
Yes — every BoM ships with a type-test-evidence pack: CMM, surface-roughness, BIL-coupon, lightning-impulse coupon, and for cast-resin parts the per-batch cure record. We design backwards from the laboratory test the part will face.
Yes — cycloaliphatic-epoxy cast resin for CT / PT secondaries and MV spacer bushings is one of our core processes. Hydrophobic over-coat available for heavy-pollution sites. Per-batch dielectric tan-δ measurement is in-line.
Yes — for programs over $250 k we embed an HV engineer at the CAD stage. We can run our own 2-D / axisymmetric field-plot solvers, or work to a plot you provide.
Yes — hot-dip-galv on carbon-steel substation steelwork (cabinet frames, lattice support, equipment-base steel) is in-line at our partner cell. Zinc thickness 70 – 110 µm per ASTM A123 / ISO 1461. Adhesion and salt-spray data ship with each lot.
Silver plating on Cu finger-clusters and disconnect contacts is our partner-cell moat. Bath chemistry audited per lot, X-ray fluorescence (XRF) on thickness, closed-loop water recovery for the cyanide bath. We can plate 5 – 25 µm Ag with ±0.2 µm uniformity.
Yes — distribution-class hardware is routinely shipped to GB/T, IS, and ANSI / NEMA standards alongside IEC. Approval-test coupons differ per standard; we package per the destination utility's acceptance protocol.
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Send drawings, or send a voltage envelope and a creepage budget. Either way you'll have an HV engineer reviewing within 72 hours and a real quote on a real schedule shortly after.
