Tray cover clamp / Cover Clamp Clips Type / Cover Clamp Ω
Cable tray cover clamps are typically manufactured from factory-galvanized or hot-dip galvanized steel sheets. Because of their resistance to rust, moisture, and high-humidity environments, they’re a great choice for cable routing systems in various industrial plants, oil and gas, petrochemical, power plant, and pharmaceutical/chemical industries.
At Ader Tavan Nami, a manufacturer of electrical equipment, fully automatic, up-to-date CNC machines are used for punching holes in the tray cover clamps, while a semi-automatic bending machine is used to bend the tray cover clamp bodies.
Tray cover clamps are produced using hot-dip or cold galvanized sheets with thicknesses ranging from 1.5 mm to 2.5 mm, depending on the client’s requirements.
Adr Tavan Nami, as a manufacturer of custom tray cover clamps in various sizes and thicknesses, is able to produce cable tray cover clamps in different dimensions and according to the client’s custom drawings.
Depending on customer needs, tray cover clamps are produced for trays with widths of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, and 60 cm, heights of 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 15 cm, and lengths of 10 and 15 cm. Note that the sizes above are examples of common orders — if the client requires custom dimensions, those exact dimensions will be produced.
Reducing Costs
To reduce purchase costs when ordering tray cover clamps, it’s common to choose a cover clamp made from a thinner sheet than the tray itself. For example, when ordering a 50 cm wide, 2 mm thick galvanized cable tray, the cover clamp can be selected in 1.5 mm thickness.
Important Factors When Choosing a Tray Cover Clamp
- Width of the galvanized cable tray (cm or mm)
- Height of the cable tray (cm or mm)
- Thickness of the tray sheet
- Thickness of the cover clamp sheet
- Whether the tray is perforated or non-perforated
- Type of galvanization — cold or hot-dip
For connecting galvanized cable trays to each other and routing cables, various fittings are required, some of which are mentioned below. Wall supports and ceiling hangers are also used to mount galvanized cable trays to ceilings or walls.
Tray Cover Clamp Fittings
Among the most important and widely used fittings for cable tray cover clamps are: internal tray elbows, external tray elbows, tray tees, tray crosses, tray couplers/joints, tray reducers, tray-to-ladder transitions, and mushroom-head bolts and nuts.
How Does a Tray Cover Clamp Work?
As the name suggests, a clamp acts as a gripping or holding device. When using a cable tray cover, these clamps must be used to secure the cover onto the tray. Without cover clamps, tray covers may separate from the tray surface due to the stresses and pressures common in industrial environments.
In such conditions, power cables become easily vulnerable. Installing these clamps prevents the covers from coming loose under any circumstances and keeps dust and debris from entering the tray due to a dislodged cover.
Cover clamps can also be thought of as connecting fasteners or supporting components for the cable tray. The spacing between installed cover clamps depends on the length of the trays used in the structure. However, the holding strength of these clamps is high enough that they can be installed at fairly wide intervals from one another.
The force these clamps exert on the grooves in the tray cover keeps the covers stable, and small connecting hardware such as bolts and nuts is typically used to install the clamps.
Why Cover Clamps Are Necessary for Proper Equipment Support
Tray covers cannot be properly used without cover clamps — especially when the cable trays are installed outdoors, since even a small impact can dislodge the covers. As you know, covers are fully galvanized metal sheets that sit on top of the cable tray as a lid.
There are many benefits to using covers, including preventing dust from entering the tray enclosure and preventing moisture penetration into the tray.
In outdoor industrial settings, these covers also prevent direct sunlight exposure to the cables, which helps extend the cables’ lifespan and improve their performance. If you intend to use your electrical equipment — including cables and cable trays — over the long term, installing tray covers along with fittings such as cover clamps is essential.
Although the edges of tray covers are designed with grooves that help stabilize the cover on the tray bed to some extent, for maximum stability the only component that can truly secure the cover is the cable tray cover clamp.
Easy Installation and Removal
There are various reasons you might need to remove covers from a cable tray — you may want to make major changes to your cable routing, or increase/decrease the cable volume.
In some cases, technical defects may occur in the cables, requiring you to open the cover clamp and remove the cover to directly access the cables and their connections. Installing and removing the clamps is not a difficult or time-consuming process.
You can remove the tray cover clamp at any time. As mentioned, their connections are completed using bolts and nuts, and they’re designed to be installed and removed from the tray surface very quickly.
Tray cover clamps are small components that are easy to install on cable tray covers. However, you must make sure the clamps are securely tightened on the cover — since the grooves in some base-shaped clamp designs can come loose from the cover surface if the nuts aren’t properly tightened. Given how frequently these clamps are used, ensuring they are properly secured is extremely important.
Size Matching Between Clamp and Tray
You cannot use just any clamp size on covers and cable trays of different widths and thicknesses. As mentioned, cable trays vary in width and thickness, which means the covers and clamps that fit them also come in different sizes.
Given the shape of the tray cover clamp and how it needs to fully and securely hold the cover in place, the clamp must be properly matched in size with both the cover and the tray. Failing to pay attention to correct sizing when purchasing can result in the clamps not fitting properly onto the trays during project execution, effectively rendering them useless.
For this reason, we always recommend keeping your cable tray’s exact dimensions in mind when purchasing the appropriate clamps. In some cases, you may also need reducer fittings to connect two cable trays of different sizes.
In other words, a single project typically doesn’t use just one tray size — you may use several tray widths. In that case, you’ll need clamps in different sizes for the same project. Just as small clamps won’t fit large trays, large clamps won’t fit small trays either.
That said, this also depends on the clamp design. Clamps that require size-matching with the tray are typically U-shaped in appearance, with a completely flat, elongated cross-section.
If you’re planning to equip a site with electrical equipment and don’t have sufficient technical expertise in this area, we recommend contacting our professional consultants via the phone numbers listed on the website or through WhatsApp for free consultation.
