Assembled vs. Overmolded Cordsets

Overview:

Connectivity serves as a cornerstone for industrial automation environments, delivering continuous production, data acquisition and communication throughout the enterprise. With the need to monitor, control and communicate with more devices, such as sensors, safety devices and PLCs in a vast range of applications, connectivity solutions must be able to withstand harsher environments to satisfy the current demands for constant production visibility and control.

Cordsets provide the foundation for this connectivity, and to meet today's application requirements, cordsets must be able to adapt to difficult environments and challenging applications. Assembled cordsets are a common connectivity solution, however, in-the-field assembly makes them vulnerable to performance deficiencies, such as mis-wiring and moisture ingress, which can impact the operation of the entire application.

To overcome these challenges, cordsets have progressed to include overmolded options. This improves the integrity of the connection by eliminating the need to assemble connectors and the associated errors that occur with assembled solutions. Overmolding can improve the durability of the cordset, as well as reduce the total cost of ownership by improving uptime and decreasing labor and maintenance, improving overall performance for an enhanced application accuracy and efficiency.

This white paper will discuss the differences between assembled and overmolded cordsets, offering a comparison of the technologies and providing a detailed description of the advantages offered with overmolded cordsets.