Gymnatorium XLR wall socket abuse?

DMahalko

Member
Does anyone know of a source for reinforced locking covers, to prevent wall sockets from being battered and destroyed in a gymnatorium?

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This is caused by students casually using the wall plate as a "target" when throwing/bouncing balls during physical education classes or other sports activities. Repeatedly pummeling an XLR jack with a basketball or soccer ball eventually crushes the steel plate and destroys the socket.

Putting the connectors inside a protruding locking steel box is not a good solution, as people could fall against the box, and hurt themselves on it during sports activities.

I'm not finding much of anything that would do the job.
 
You could probably have something machined fairly easily that would do the job for you, out of 1/8" sheet metal or something.
 
Another option would be to use standard floor plates. Usually thick brass with a threaded round cover.
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I'm still doing research on this. Here's an odd one, which looks exactly like what I want.

Suicide prevention locking outlet covers to keep people from trying to electrocute themselves
Securing Hospitals - 812-S41 SafeSupport® SR Electrical Outlet Enclosure

The question is if the cover is hollow stamped sheet metal or not. I assume no, as the keylock needs to mount on something. If it is hollow, it may still be gradually pounded inward and crushed.


This next one seems like a very simple solution, an oval metal ring meant to be trim, to go around a rectangular GFCI outlet:
AP-807-GFI Tombstone | Floor Outlets | Floor Box | Floor Outlet Box

Build up a stack of ten of them to make a deep well around the outlet that a ball will not be able to strike, and minimal sharp corners that might hurt anyone if they fell against it.
 
Rick illustrates an excellent general point, which I usually phrase as "get the glue right".

Slightly longer: if you have to decide on an interface for something, software, electronic, or physical, you should choose the most popular already extant interface which can be reused for your purpose without violating the Rule Of Least Astonishment or some other compelling constraint.

AV connectors mounted in Decora inserts are an *excellent* example of this; as long as you don't need the much higher panel density you can get from custom mountings, there are *loads* of things that work with a Decora-style component.

An early example of this was, probably, the last ASCII serial terminal manufactured, the ADDS 4000 'Littlefoot'.

It was a 12"x12"x1" metal box, with a barrel for power, a DB-9 or RJ45 for serial, and PS-2 and VGA connectors. Probably a parallel DB-25; I think one model had 10Base-T and a telnet client.

But if you had a customer whose employee needed a 22" monitor to be able to see... or an ergonomic keyboard, or whatever? You could just buy it and plug it in.

Get The Glue Right. No matter what you're desiging.
 
Traditional floor pockets aren't just for floor mounting, I've seen them in walls too. If it can handle a scissor lift, it can handle a basketball.
 
Even with better wall plates that XLR connector can still get damaged. Not sure why anyone would mount a floor box in a wall, they're not designed for that. For fairly cheap just look at Hoffman electrical boxes with locking covers, so long as you don't mind getting your XLR connector plate custom machined (not typically too expensive).

If you want a more "pre-fab" type of box, look at FSR wall boxes. FSR When Performance Counts
 
That looks like a very thin wallplate, PanelCrafters makes some of their plates out of 1/8" (i think) steel. I doubt those would be able to bend like the ones seen in the picture. They're relatively cheap too, especially if you just want a single XLR with no engraving or anything.
 
There are several reasons to use a floor plate on a wall as a wall is a less demanding location. A big one is that doesn't violate codes or safety listings. (AFAIK, always willing to learn...) I don't care about the intent of the product designer. I care about verifiable capabilities of the product.

Other advantages are; being off-the-shelf, low cost, easy to install products that work well with other elements on the job. Like the wall box embedded in the OPs wall. It would be cheaper to replace the wall plate many times than to replace the box in the wall. Why go custom when cheaper and more practical products are at hand?
 

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