Epoxy Coating Powder is your best choice for busbar insulation

Selecting the Right Busbar Insulation: Why Epoxy Coating Powder might be your Best Choice

When it comes to insulating busbars, there are a number of options available, including plastic-sheathing, mylar, and epoxy insulation. While each option has its own advantages, epoxy powder-coating is the best choice for ensuring the safety, longevity, and cost-effectiveness of your electrical installation. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of choosing epoxy insulation for your busbars and why it’s the ideal choice for your next project.

Cost Savings

One of the biggest advantages of epoxy insulation is the cost savings it offers. Epoxy is 67% cheaper per linear meter compared to plastic-sheathing and mylar insulation. It also has a much higher maximum operating temperature of 180°C compared to plastic at 93°C. This makes epoxy a great choice when considering life-cycle costing for your electrical installation.

Quality and Durability

Another key benefit of epoxy insulation is its quality and durability. Epoxy has great dielectric strength and perfect uniform adhesion, making it great for covering complex and odd-shaped busbars. Its chemically bonded conformal coating eliminates voids and prevents moisture penetration, making it scratch-resistant and able to handle thermal expansion and flex stresses. This ensures your installation will last for many years, with minimal maintenance required.

Future-proofing Your Installation

With trends showing a rise in the average operating temperature of power distribution installations, it’s essential to choose an insulation option that can handle the increased heat. Epoxy’s higher maximum operating temperature ensures your installation is ready for the future, providing you peace of mind and protection against potential damage.

Thermally Conductive Epoxy – The Best Choice

epoxy coated busbar showing temperature vs resistance
When busbars lose their heat faster their current-carrying capacity increases. This means less
material is needed to have the same current-carrying capacity.

At CAPLINQ, our engineers and product development team have taken the best qualities of epoxy and made it even better. We’ve developed a new thermally conductive epoxy coating that has over 300% the standard thermal conductivity (1.0 W/mK) compared to standard epoxy (0.3 W/mK). This increased thermal conductivity allows for faster heat loss, which can save on material weight and cost, and increase efficiency and overall longevity of your installation.

Causes of increased resistance in busbar assemblies
Resistance is determined by temperature, length, cross-sectional area, and material.
Resistance increases running and maintenance costs.

Faster heat loss also means you can get the same current-carrying capacity for less material. Busbars can be thinner, longer, lighter, and even made of a less conductive material when working at lower temperatures. Saving initial installation costs and long-term maintenance costs.

In Conclusion:

When it comes to insulating busbars, epoxy powder coating is the best choice for ensuring the safety, longevity, and cost-effectiveness of your electrical installation. With its cost savings, quality and durability, future-proofing capabilities, and thermally conductive options, epoxy insulation is the ideal choice for your next project. At CAPLINQ, we’re committed to providing the best solution for your busbar insulation needs, and we’re confident that our epoxy coating is the only real design decision you can make to minimize life-cycle costs and ensure your installation is safe, durable, and cost-effective.

Please be sure to explore our whole range of epoxy coating powders including our halogen-free LINQSOL BCP-1504 which is developed specifically for busbar epoxy coating applications including both low voltage (<600V) busbars as well as medium voltage (up to 38kV) busbar applications.

We have also introduced powders such as LINQSOL BCP1507 and LINQSOL BCP1509 have been proven to coat thick under various temperatures.

Do you have a busbar that needs coating or do you need to select an electrically insulating powder for your busbar application? Contact us with your process and application requirements and we’ll make sure to find something that fits your needs.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

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