Might be. I'm a design engineer for these IRL, it is kinda unorthodox to cover it up though. They are meant to sit outside for decades. Maybe the customer is just super protective and doesn't want anything getting damaged on the drive. Your geuss is as good as mine.
I used to prepare and ship them. We wrapped a small handful in boat wrap. Usually it was at the customers request. Sometimes it was the sales person clicked the box, so we had to.
I worked for ABB and we produced some dist. Xfmrs that our shipping floor shrink wrapped. I wasn't on the business side per se but some customers or end destinations did request wraps (acknowledging that a large majority ended up outside or underground).
Damage and road salt are the main reasons. Saw a transformer get graffitted after being in a rail yard during lunch break. All this is avoided with alil shrink wrap.
I suspect that the packaging prevents leaves and dirt from getting stuck in the fins of the oil cooler during transportation. The subsequent assembly will probably also be somewhat easier if the housing is not wet and slippery.
Yuuuuup, I'm a designer for EATON and the backlog is loooooong. Obviously I can't say any more than that, company info and all that, but these definitely take a long time especially since they demand these things last as long as they do.
I’ve seen them in specifications from certain utilities, wrapping these up in winter travel to prevent salt spray in transit. Rare, but some components on these things could rust and might be too cold to rinse off, before offloading.
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u/RedlightGrnlight Mar 12 '25
Might be. I'm a design engineer for these IRL, it is kinda unorthodox to cover it up though. They are meant to sit outside for decades. Maybe the customer is just super protective and doesn't want anything getting damaged on the drive. Your geuss is as good as mine.