Ironwood Brewing automated its brewhouse and immediately started killing control hardware. The culprit was the daily reality of a brewery: high-pressure, hot, caustic washdown that found its way into painted-steel enclosures never meant for it, corroding them and shorting the electronics inside.
A brewery is a washdown environment
Breweries are cleaned aggressively and constantly — hot water, caustic and acid sanitizers, sprayed under pressure over every surface, including the control panels. A standard painted-steel enclosure rusts at the seams, its gaskets fail, and water gets to the PLC and drives. Ironwood was losing controls and, with them, production time.
They needed enclosures actually rated and built for washdown, not repurposed indoor boxes.
What a NEMA 4 build really requires
A NEMA 4 rating means the enclosure keeps out hose-directed water — and earning it is about construction, not just a label. That means stainless steel for the caustic environment, continuously seam-welded and ground corners, a gasketed door with proper latching, and sealed penetrations. Every one of those details is where a lesser box leaks.
It's exactly the kind of fabrication where the seams and the sealing matter more than the flat pattern.
The part we built
We fabricated the cabinet from 14-gauge 304 stainless with a No. 4 brushed finish, seam-welded and ground for a continuous water barrier, with a gasketed door and sealed gland entries. 304 stainless stands up to the sanitizers, and the sealed construction keeps the daily washdown out of the electronics. We can add the cutouts, hardware, and mounting panel to Ironwood's layout.
Because we build enclosures turnkey, Ironwood received cabinets ready to populate, sized to their controls.
Dry electronics, finally
In the same washdown that had been destroying painted-steel boxes, the sealed stainless cabinets keep the interiors dry, and the corrosion and water-shorted-controls failures stopped. Ironwood got their uptime back and stopped budgeting for enclosure replacements.
The electronics were never the problem — the box around them was. A proper NEMA 4 build is what let good controls survive a brewery.
“We were replacing control panels every few months. The sealed stainless cabinets just shrug off the washdown — the electronics finally stay dry.”
Casey Monroe, Head Brewer & Owner, Ironwood Brewing