In any industrial, commercial, or residential setting often managing cables is an important but daunting task. Different sectors have diverse types of cables, and so require different managing setups. In such cases, you might have heard of two terms: cable trays and raceway. While both of these serve the same purpose of protecting and managing the cables, they aren’t similar. To choose between them you need to know the difference between them. Thus here we are to help you break down their key differences and help you make the right choice as per your needs.
What is a Cable Tray?
A cable tray is a structural system used to support and organize electrical cables, commercial cables, wires, and sometimes pipes. Cable trays are often referred to as the highway for cables, providing them with a safe and open runway. These are made up of aluminum, steel, or fiberglass ensuring durable and safe use for holding heavy cables. The open design of these cable trays makes them easy to access and quick to organize.
Cable trays come in different types, including:
- Perforated Trays: They have small holes or perforations throughout the surface ensuring cable support with effective ventilation.
- Ladder Trays: These look like a ladder, having two side rails with rungs in between, offering excellent heat dissipation and ventilation to heavy-duty cables.
- Wire Mesh Trays: These are made with wires, suitable to carry loads of lightweight cables, ensuring proper ventilation.
- Solid Bottom Trays: These wires provide complete support for the sensitive cables, but lack heat dissipation properties.
What is a Raceway?
A raceway, on the other hand, is a closed conduit structure safeguarding cables from external factors. Unlike the cable trays, these raceways are fully covered ensuring the safety of the sensitive wires from dust, debris, moisture, sunlight, and other external environmental factors. These are widely used in buildings, offices, or areas where cables need to be kept protected from human approach or hidden for a better look. Raceways are made up of PVC, plastic, or metal ensuring long-term usage in extremely harsh conditions.
Raceways, often come in different types, including:
- Flexible Raceways: These raceways are designed for complex areas. The flexible raceways can be easily routed in different directions or in changed layouts.
- Surface-Mounted Raceways: For the retrofitting areas, where wires need to be mounted on the existing structures, these are the best choice.
- Metallic Raceways: Built with high premium aluminum or steel, ensuring long-term protection and unwavering durability.
- Non-Metallic Raceways: These are made of PVC to ensure they are lightweight and corrosion-resistant for areas prone to heavy moisture.
Key Differences: Cable Tray vs Raceway
To choose between the right cable management system from the cable tray and raceway, you need to know the key differences between them. As both serve the same function but in different ways. Here’s how:
1. Structural & Design Differences
- Cable Trays: A cable tray is an open-design structure that provides a resting platform for heavy wires. Their open design ensures proper accessibility and heat-dissipation for the wires carrying heavy loads, thus making it an ideal choice for heavy-duty wires.
- Raceway: A raceway is a conduit-design cable management system that is perfect for wires sensitive to dust, debris, moisture, water, or other external factors. Their closed and robust design makes it suitable for use in residential areas, offices, or places where wires need to be kept hidden or protected.
2. Load-Bearing Capacity
- Cable Trays: They are designed to handle heavy weight of cables, ensuring it as an ideal choice for industrial and commercial uses, where cables need a path to be in a well-organized manner.
- Raceway: They are designed to hold lightweight wires, being used in offices, residences or areas where only a few cables are needed to be supported and protected.
3. Accessibility & Maintenance
- Cable Trays: Due to the open design of cable trays, their maintenance is easy and cheap. Cables can easily be rearranged, added, or removed from the trays without any hassle, making them ideal for the areas where frequent changes are expected.
- Raceway: These are way more challenging to maintain and access-through. Due to their closed consult system, for adding, removing or rearranging the wires, opening the raceway is required. This makes the maintenance and accessibility for raceway time consuming and costly.
4. Installation Process
- Cable Trays: Due to the open design of cable trays, it is much easier and quicker to install them in the open areas, ensuring easy addition, removal, or adjustment of the wires and trays.
- Raceway: These require more time and labor effort for the installation, as they need to be mounted and enclosed after wire arrangement. But once installed, they provide a clean and robust pathway for wires.
5.Heat Dissipation & Ventilation
- Cable Trays: Their open-design ensures easy and excellent heat-dissipation and ventilation for the heavy-duty cables, generally important for those high-power cables in the hot climate.
- Raceway: Raceways being a closed-conduit cable system, do not provide effective ventilation, thus making it the worst choice for high-power cables.
6. Security & Protection
- Cable Trays: Cable trays are capable of providing protection to cable from excess heating only. But their open design does not shield wires from external factors like moisture, dust, debris, and others.
- Raceway: Raceways are the best for sensitive wires to protect them from external factors keeping them completely enclosed in a solid. They are perfect for areas where wires are exposed to harsh environmental conditions.
7. Cost Differences
- Cable Trays: Cable trays as compared to other cable management systems are more cost-effective. Due to their open-design structures, a simple installation process reduces the overall price for cable trays.
- Raceway: Raceways are a costlier choice, due to their complex designs of closed conduit. The raceway cable tray price varies depending upon the size, material, and complexion of the installation.
8. Aesthetic Differences
- Cable Trays: Cable trays pay their attention to functionality rather than appearances, making it an ideal choice for industrial or commercial settings where durability, productivity and operational efficiency are more important than aesthetics.
- Raceway: Due to their closed and appealing designs, they look more aesthetic than the cable trays. Their attractive designs make them a better choice for offices, homes, and residential buildings to make it blend with the interiors perfectly.
9. Adaptability & Flexibility
- Cable Trays: Cable trays, unlike raceways, are more flexible to change. They are fit for the areas where frequent changes are needed either to add, or remove the cables.
- Raceway: Raceways are less flexible than others, due to their closed design. Expanding the raceway or modifying them can be more time-consuming, costly, and labor intensive.
10. Applications
- Cable Trays: Due to their open-design, a fit for heavy-duty cables are found in industrial or commercial setups where high power electric cables or communication wires need to be organized and supported.
- Raceway: Being lightweight and of closed conduit design, they are perfect for schools, residents, offices or other areas where cables are needed to be hidden or protected.
Conclusion
Understanding the differences between cable trays and raceways can significantly impact the safety and operational efficiency of the work areas. While, both of them sound and look similar, but both function differently. As cable trays are perfect for high-power cables, due to their sturdy and durability, raceways on the other side are good for sensitive cables protecting them from external factors. Thus, evaluating your project needs, finalizing a budget, and keeping a check of safety requirements you can easily choose from either of the options. Then, what makes you stay confused? Assess your project, know the differences, and contact SimcoSteel for further details.