electronic equipment installation guidelines 135The back of this heavy-duty DC-to-AC inverter has air-circulation ports for a built-in cooling fan. If you mount this inverter
in an area with high ambient temperatures (as in an engine room), and the fan has only hot air to circulate, cooling effi-
ciency will be reduced, and eventually the inverter will stop working.The heat sink fins on this diode-type battery isolator must
have cool air circulating around them or the diodes will
almost surely overheat and fail.
to temperatures below –4°F (–20°C) or above
140°F (60°C).
The bottom line regarding temperature is
simple: There may be specific industry stan-
dards that dictate how you as a technician or
boatowner should proceed, and there may be
manufacturer recommendations that apply. In
all cases, you should follow the manufacturer’s
specific recommendations. In the absence of
those, look to the industry standards for guid-
ance. You must find the applicable limits and
consider how they can be met on your boat or
your customer’s boat. Sometimes this is as easy
as finding a new location for the device in
question. Other times, it may require the addi-
tion of a cooling fan to facilitate proper air cir-
culation or the installation of louvered vents to
ventilate otherwise dead-air spaces on board
(see photo page 136).diodes (embedded in epoxy
“potting” material, which
helps transfer heat to
the cooling fins)heat sink fins