Dead-Front Question

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sii

Senior Member
Location
Nebraska
One of our facilities received a recommendation from a safety consultant to replace a panel similar to the one shown in the attachment. They are saying, "There is an open faced panel in a general area of the plant. 2014 NEC Section 408.3: Panelboards shall be mounted in cabinets, cutout boxes, or identified enclosures and shall be dead-front. Exception: Panel boards other than of the dead front externally operable type shall be permitted where accessible only to qualified persons. A dead-front is a cabinet without live parts exposed to a person on the operating side of the equipment."

To be clear, the panel in question is not the one shown but is similar in that it does not have a door nor is it meant to have a door. This is in an industrial environment.

I disagree with this recommendation. First of all they referenced the wrong section, should be 408.38. I don't see this section as requiring a door, seems to me it only requires protection from energized parts. Is that correct?

I'm asking because my facility has a couple panels like this and I'll eventually be forced to replace them if this recommendation is accepted. At this point this is really not my fight but I've been asked for my two cents.
 

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Jraef

Moderator, OTD
Staff member
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
Occupation
Electrical Engineer
This is a really common error. It's because that definition of "Dead Front" seems ambiguous, unless you understand the CONTEXT of the term.

The context is, as opposed to "Live Front", which is something that has not existed in the lifetimes of most people in this industry, except as old existing installations.

There is a "Live Front" panel.
AN6.JPG

What Live Front means is that in order to actuate the switches, you are REQUIRED to be near live conductors. The panel you showed in your example IS a "Dead Front" panel, when compared to this.

The OTHER technology they are referring to is just an "Access Door", but I hear people refer to that as "Dead Front" all the time.

Panelboard.JPG
 

Tony S

Senior Member
Personally, I think we should bring back the old Live-Front panels. They were cool to look at and usually weeded out the complacent.

They may be “cool to look at” have you worked on them live? I was glad to see them going in the scrap bin along with all the manual oil switches.

This is the last one I replaced
TRK-2-switch_zps90a2a75e.jpg
 
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