Bringing power and connectivity to the point of need is usually one of the final steps in any construction project and often requires the most flexibility. It isn’t until the end of a job when electrical contractors learn the provided custom enclosures weren’t designed or sized properly, that additional data lines and ports or an integrated power module are needed, or that the customer changed the floor layout, cubicle arrangement, or data port configuration without notice.
That’s why many engineers turn to Snake Tray when it comes to the discreet connection points for wired and wireless data, communications, entertainment/multimedia, AC power distribution, power over ethernet (POE) sensors and controls, security systems, and more.
Bigger Doesn’t Always Mean Better
Building a college dormitory, hospital, or hotel that requires hundreds or thousands of the same exact cookie-cutter enclosure for each room? There are manufacturing giants capable of providing generic ceiling enclosures at scale, but you’ll have to accept standard box configurations, probably pay for ports, plugs, modules, and fans you don’t need, and deal with international shipping and supply chain scheduling headaches.
Finishing a professional office or retail space? You can buy empty wall enclosure shells with a perforated back panel and leave it to licensed electricians to cut and wire each box to code on site – an expensive process. Need a size besides the standard 14” x 14” wall enclosure, a low-profile enclosure to fit inside thin partitions, an extra bracket, or a locking cover? You could wait months for customized orders to be fit into a mass manufacturer’s production schedule.
Wiring a large commercial space like a call center, high-end art gallery, showroom, or museum with a decorative raised access floor (RAF)? Today’s customers want floor enclosures that are easily movable to accommodate changes in room layout. They want the cover finish to be indistinguishable from, and perfectly flush with, the surrounding RAF panels to avoid a tripping hazard. It’s hard to find that as a stock item in a manufacturer catalog.
Snake Tray Custom Enclosures are Built to Hide Technology in Plain Sight
At Snake Tray, we have the design expertise and manufacturing agility to produce custom enclosures to the exact specifications needed for any job, large or small. We can tweak the size and shape of our basic enclosures to your requirements. We can pre-wire them with any connectivity port and power configuration to match your application. We can make them nearly invisible.
Some would call this customization. We think of it as more than that. We design custom enclosure solutions for individual projects in partnership with our customers one at a time, and no two projects are ever the same.
We started offering a line of 2′ x 2′, 2′ x 4′ and 2′ x 6′ box empty ceiling enclosures that install flush with drop ceilings at the behest of contractors tired of paying for enclosures packed with features they did not need. We provide a checklist (pictured) to allow the customer to populate the box, choosing and paying only for the required characteristics and components, and then deliver a finished enclosure to the job site ready for installation.
Customers select the material and finish of the box, and whether or not to have a locking door, shelves, brackets, pneumatic struts, cooling fans, vents, an integrated power supply, conduit knockouts, wiring harnesses, fire-stop rings, etc. Once assembled, installers simply connect the cables running to each enclosure to the proper data, telecom, or AV interface terminal port panel (not supplied by Snake Tray) and mount them to the brackets.
For horizontal-mounted applications, Snake Tray offers a complete line of recessed and surface mount wall enclosures available in multiple sizes, depths, materials, and finishes.
Some are small enough to hold an optical network terminal (ONT) box for a passive optical network (PON) (top), others are big enough to serve as a mini telecom closet (middle). Some offer locking doors, others have a Plexiglas window for use with wireless networking equipment.
Several Snake Tray wall enclosures feature not just perforated but fully removable back panels (bottom). This allows Snake Tray or the contractor to pre-wire the enclosure at our factory or their shop (the Snake Tray Enclosure Checklist works for wall and floor enclosures too!) and simply have the installer make the final connections on site, rather than first cutting out rear panel sections for every box at the job.
When bringing power and connectivity to the surface from beneath a raised access floor, Snake Tray offers an entire family of recessed floor and zone enclosures that are compatible with any type of RAF. These custom enclosures can be configured with any combination of power receptacles, data ports, and patch panels to connect workstations and cubicles to the network and power grid at the exact location, and can be moved easily when needed (top). Snake Tray floor enclosures can be equipped with locking lids. Some have covers that are recessed to accept matching flooring material. Our newest all metal circular floor box for raised access floors, the CM 708 (bottom), is specifically designed to fit flush in the standard 8” diameter air diffuser holes of a RAF, making installation and relocation fast and easy with no tripping hazard; just swap it out with the existing air diffuser in the new desired position.
Examples of Adaptation
For the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles Snake Tray designed a hideaway floor box to bring power and data to a massive exhibit space that would be in constant flux. The floor boxes were designed to be virtually invisible to the naked eye when not in use by perfectly matching the wood grain flooring. When an exhibit requires power and/or data, a suction cup is used to lift and slide the hinged lid to reveal the ports and electrical plugs below. The exhibit stand is then moved into position over the enclosure for concealed connectivity. Read the case study here.
For the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Snake Tray designed and built secure floor zone cabling enclosures with a pre-configured 20+ port patch panel designed to FBI specifications with a locking cover for increased security.
For hotels and multi-unit residential complexes, we manufacture secure wall enclosures made from galvanized steel and offer powder coated finishes to blend with hallway and room décor.
Snake Tray created a recessed wall mounted enclosure with a Plexiglas window to securely hold wireless transmitters for dorm rooms, hospitality environments, and open spaces providing Wi-Fi connectivity. The window permits visibility to router status indicators and allows the signal to permeate the enclosure easier.
In the halls of the US Congress, Snake Tray designed a large surface mount wall enclosure to handle the racks of next generation communication and networking cables being installed in the Capitol.
A totally customized, one-off solution that would be difficult if not impossible for larger manufacturers to execute is right in our wheelhouse.
Further, all Snake Tray enclosures are universal. That means they work with any type of cable conveyance system, ours or any other brand. Plus, all Snake Tray enclosures are designed, manufactured, and assembled here in the USA and sourced from domestic raw materials and suppliers, making Snake Tray custom enclosures 100% compliant with the Buy America Act while eliminating international supply chain headaches.
Snake Tray: Your Go-to Enclosure Manufacturer
When it comes to enclosures – ceiling, wall, or floor – there is no other manufacturer prepared to design and deliver solutions on a per project basis like Snake Tray. Don’t wait until you realize the enclosures you need aren’t the ones you’ve got on hand. Our team of engineers is standing by – along with our checklist – to build your next enclosure to your exact project specifications and get it right from the start. Contact us to learn more.
