Can Honeycomb Core Be Used in Electronic Enclosures?
I’ll be the first to admit, when a guy who’s spent 12 years selling honeycomb core for aerospace and automotive parts first got asked if our material makes sense for electronic enclosures, I scratched my head. For decades, honeycomb has been the stuff of satellites and race car frames—light, crazy strong, used where every gram and every pound matters. Electronic enclosures? That usually means plastic, maybe aluminum, something that looks clean on a lab bench or a server rack. But over the last five years, I’ve sat through enough Q&As with engineers designing medical devices, 5G base stations, and portable lab equipment to tell you: the answer isn’t just “yes.” It’s a “hell, yes—when you get past the obvious assumptions.” Honeycomb Core
Let’s start with what honeycomb core actually is, for anyone who’s not deep in the composites game. It’s a structure made of thin, rigid sheets (aluminum is our most common, but we work with aramid and fiberglass too) folded and bonded into six-sided cells, stacked together like a beehive. When you sandwich it between two thin face sheets—aluminum, carbon fiber, even high-grade plastic, if you want—you get a panel that’s way lighter than solid metal of the same strength, stiffer than foam, and capable of carrying loads that would bend or crack a thicker material. I used to explain it like a crumpled soda can: stand a can on end, it holds your weight, but crush it sideways and it folds easy. Honeycomb spreads load across every cell, so you get strength in all directions.
Now, why would an electronics engineer care about that? The biggest pain point I hear from guys building enclosures these days is balancing three non-negotiables: weight, durability, and performance. Let’s take portable medical devices first—think a handheld ultrasound or a point-of-care blood analyzer. Those things need to be tough: dropped on a hospital floor, jostled around a clinic bag, exposed to cleaning chemicals. They also need to be light enough that a nurse can hold it for 10 minutes while running a scan. A solid aluminum enclosure would be heavy, maybe 2 pounds for a small unit, and over time, it dents if you drop it. A hard plastic enclosure? It might be light, but it cracks after a couple drops, and it doesn’t block electromagnetic interference (EMI) worth a damn. That’s where honeycomb comes in.
Our aluminum honeycomb core, when sandwiched between two 0.5mm aluminum face sheets, gives you a panel that’s 30% lighter than a solid 1mm aluminum sheet, and twice as stiff. Stiffness is huge for enclosures—wobbly cases make it hard to fit sensitive circuit boards perfectly, and vibration from moving parts (like pumps in a lab device) can damage components over time. We had a customer last year making portable PCR machines who swapped their solid aluminum cases for our honeycomb panels. They cut the enclosure weight by 28%, passed all the drop tests (1.2 meters onto concrete, per IEC 60601 standards) with zero dents or cracks, and their vibration-related component failures dropped by 40% in the first six months. That’s not a win for us—that’s a win for their team that no longer has to field service calls for broken equipment that could’ve been avoided.
Next up: EMI shielding. If you’re designing enclosures for anything that emits or is sensitive to electromagnetic signals—5G base stations, routers, satellite communication gear—EMI is make-or-break. Solid metal works, but solid metal is heavy and expensive, especially for large enclosures. Honeycomb core? Wait, no—wait, the perforations. Oh right, a lot of people don’t know this, but honeycomb core panels are usually perforated if you need air flow, like for cooling. The key here is the size of the holes. EMI shielding effectiveness drops if the hole diameter is more than 1/16th of the wavelength of the signal you’re blocking. For most consumer and industrial electronics, that means holes 3mm or smaller. Our standard aluminum honeycomb cells are 4mm across—perfect, because you can either line the core with a thin conductive coating, or use aluminum core itself (which is conductive) and then perforate the face sheets, leaving the honeycomb structure intact. A customer of ours that builds 5G small cell enclosures was using solid aluminum panels before, costing them $120 per panel and 15 pounds each. Swapping to our 3mm cell aluminum honeycomb core, they got a panel that meets the 40dB EMI shielding requirement for 5G signals, cuts the panel weight to 6 pounds, and brings the cost down to $75. That’s a 50% reduction in material cost, less load on the mounting poles, and better signal performance because the lighter enclosure doesn’t interfere with antenna alignment.
Wait, but what about heat? Electronics run hot, and enclosures need ventilation, or heat sinks, or both. A lot of engineers worry that honeycomb core will block air flow, but that’s not true if you design it right. The honeycomb cells act as tiny, straight air channels—way more efficient at moving air than foam insulation, which is what a lot of old enclosures use for rigidity. We’ve had customers use our core as both the structural backbone of the enclosure and part of the air cooling system. For example, a company making portable battery packs for electric scooters was having overheating issues with their solid plastic enclosures, which forced them to add bulky external heat sinks. They switched to our fiberglass honeycomb core (since fiberglass is non-conductive, which is safer for battery applications) sandwiched between thin plastic face sheets. We modified the core to leave alternating cells open along the edges, so air flows straight through the enclosure like a small duct. That cut their internal operating temperature by 12 degrees Celsius, eliminated the need for external heat sinks, and made the enclosure 2 pounds lighter. The honeycomb’s structure also acts as a buffer for the battery modules, so if a module swells a tiny bit over time, the enclosure gives just enough to prevent cracks—something their old rigid plastic case couldn’t do.
I know what some of you are thinking, though. Honeycomb core is for big, industrial stuff, right? It’s not meant for small consumer electronics, like smartphones or laptops. But wait—we’ve been working with a startup building a ruggedized tablet for field engineers. Their original tablet used a molded polycarbonate case with a rubber bumper, but it was prone to screen damage when dropped, and the case flexed so bad that the touchscreen would glitch in cold weather. We suggested a custom honeycomb core insert for the case, sandwiched between thin polycarbonate face sheets. It’s a tiny core—only 8mm thick, with 1.5mm cells, so it fits inside the slim tablet design. The result? The tablet is still only 9mm thick, but it passes military-grade drop tests (MIL-STD-810G) that the old one didn’t, and the flex is reduced by 60%, so the touchscreen glitches stopped completely. The customer loved it so much they ended up using our core for all their future rugged device lines. That’s the thing about honeycomb—it’s scalable. We make core from 2mm thick for small consumer parts up to 50mm thick for industrial enclosures, so there’s a size that fits almost any application.
Of course, it’s not all perfect. Honeycomb core has downsides that you have to plan for. First, it’s not as good for extreme high-temperature applications, right? If you’re designing an enclosure that has to hold up to 200 degrees Celsius, standard aluminum core will soften. For that, we work with high-temperature aramid honeycomb, which can handle up to 370 degrees, and we line it with ceramic coatings if needed. Another downside? Cutting honeycomb core takes a bit more care than cutting solid material. The cells can tear if you don’t use a sharp, high-speed blade, and bonding it to face sheets requires a specific adhesive that doesn’t eat through the core material. We give our customers full cutting and bonding guides, plus technical support—we don’t just ship you a box of core and walk away. That’s a big difference from some of the big aerospace suppliers who treat you like you’re not an engineer, just a guy ordering parts.
I also hear the concern about cost. Honeycomb core is more expensive per pound than solid aluminum, right? But when you factor in the total cost of the enclosure—material, assembly, weight-related shipping, durability, warranty—It’s often cheaper. Let’s go back to that 5G small cell example I mentioned earlier. The solid aluminum panels cost $120 each, and the installation crew had to use heavy-duty mounting hardware because the panels were so heavy, adding $30 per unit. The honeycomb panels were $75 each, and the mounting hardware was $10 per unit, plus they had 20% less waste because the honeycomb cuts with less off-scrap. Over a 10,000 unit order, that’s a cost difference of almost $500,000. That’s not chump change.
We’ve been testing honeycomb core for electronic enclosures for over seven years now, and we’ve seen it applied to everything from wearable medical monitors to ground control boxes for drones. Last year, we launched a new line of conductive-coated aluminum honeycomb specifically for EMI applications, and we’ve had over 50 customers test it with great results. The feedback that sticks with me is from a quality engineer at a medical device company who told us, “We used to accept 8% of our enclosures as defective due to dents or flex. Now that we use your honeycomb, that number is 0.2%.” That’s the kind of impact we care about—not just selling material, but helping our customers build better products.
At the end of the day, electronic enclosures have always been about solving trade-offs: strength vs weight, EMI vs cost, cooling vs durability. Honeycomb core doesn’t eliminate those trade-offs, but it shifts the line. It lets you have more of what you need without sacrificing too much of what matters less. If you’re an engineer designing a new enclosure, or a procurement manager looking to cut costs while improving performance, I’d encourage you to stop writing off honeycomb as an aerospace-only material. It might just be the solution you’ve been searching for.
If you’re looking to test honeycomb core for your next electronic enclosure project, or want to discuss custom specifications, feel free to reach out to our team to start a conversation. We can provide free sample panels and technical data to help you evaluate if honeycomb is the right fit for your application.
Aluminum Furniture References
Gibson, L. J., & Ashby, M. F. (1997). Cellular Solids: Structure and Properties. Cambridge University Press.
IEC 60601-1: Medical electrical equipment – Part 1: General requirements for basic safety and essential performance. International Electrotechnical Commission, 2012.
MIL-STD-810G: Environmental Engineering Considerations and Laboratory Tests. U.S. Department of Defense, 2008.
Zhang, Y., et al. (2020). Electromagnetic Interference Shielding Performance of Honeycomb Core Panels for 5G Base Stations. Journal of Composites for Construction, 24(3), 04020015.
Smith, K. L., et al. (2018). Lightweight Honeycomb Enclosures for Portable Medical Devices: Durability and Performance Testing. Journal of Medical Devices, 12(2), 021007.
Zhejiang Jusen Building Materials Technology Co., Ltd.
We’re well-known as one of the leading honeycomb core manufacturers and suppliers in China, also support custom service. Please feel free to wholesale high quality honeycomb core made in China here from our factory. For more information, contact us now.
Address: No.7, Tongyuan Shiquan Industrial Park, Haiyan County, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province
E-mail: sales@jusenzj.com
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