WireCrafters Style 840

One system, two meshes

Getting the vocabulary straight, because the names are used loosely everywhere.

Style 840 is the partition system: the posts, the panel frames, the doors, the hardware and the way it all bolts together. What varies inside that system is the mesh, and there are two.

What this guide covers, and what sits elsewhere

This is the product-line guide: how to read the part numbers and specify a system. For the broader category question, including how wire partitions compare with other security approaches and the reach-distance standards that govern guarding generally, see the Wire Partitions & Security Cages guide. For perimeter guarding around machinery, see also the Barriers & Machine Guarding guide, and note the warning in Section Thirteen about which product actually belongs around a machine.

Woven or welded: the real comparison

Including two published figures that contradict the usual sales story.

The received wisdom is that welded wire is the cheaper, faster option and woven is the premium one. Two of those three claims do not survive contact with the published catalog.

What genuinely differs

The weight difference is real and it is the largest measurable gap between the two: welded panels run roughly a quarter to a third lighter at the same size. On a big installation that is genuinely less material to lift into place.

How to actually choose

Reading a model number

Not documented by the manufacturer. This is our reading of it, checked against published dimensions.

WireCrafters does not publish a key to its cage model numbers, but the pattern is consistent across the catalog and it is worth learning, because it tells you the mesh, the footprint and the door type at a glance.

The other numbering schemes

Panels and sizes

Stock sizes, weights, and the filler panel that saves the install.

Panels install horizontally between posts, with the mesh opening parallel to the floor. Stock widths run from 1 ft to 10 ft in one-foot increments, in two heights, 4 ft and 5 ft, which stack to make up the system height. The maximum panel is 12 ft wide by 5 ft high.

The adjustable filler panel

Real buildings are not multiples of one foot. The adjustable filler panel closes the leftover gap at the end of a run: AP4 at 1 ft 2-3/8 in. by 4 ft, and AP5 at the same width by 5 ft. They are solid sheet metal and adjust from 1 in. to 11 in.

Finish and colour

The finish is a grey enamel and the product is published as finished for interior applications. Note that the two published documents describe it differently, one as a prime coat of alkyd enamel applied electrostatically and the other as a coat of acrylic enamel, so confirm the finish specification on the quote if it matters to you. In-stock colours beyond the standard grey are white, blue, safety yellow, orange, tan, red and black. Custom powder coat matching is available at additional cost.

Posts, base plates and anchoring

The part that makes the difference between a partition and a barrier.

Hardware that faces the right way

The 3/8 in. hardware is specified as inaccessible from the exterior of the enclosure, against the 1/4 in. accessible hardware found on lighter systems. That is a security feature and it has a practical consequence: the enclosure has an inside and an outside, and it has to be assembled with the fasteners facing in. Getting that backwards on install turns a security cage into a bolt-together kit that anyone with a nut driver can dismantle.

Panels attach to posts with the nuts and bolts supplied, or with tek screws. The whole system is bolted; nothing is welded on site.

Heights, ceilings and the top gap

Whether to run to the deck is a security decision with a real cost attached.

Standard system heights

Three stock system heights are published, set by the post: 8 ft 5-1/4 in., 10 ft 5-1/4 in. and 12 ft 5-1/4 in. These are the three that appear as options on cage listings. A shorter 5 ft 3-1/4 in. system height exists in the CAD library with its own posts but is not published as a stock height, so treat it as a made-to-order option. Custom heights extend to 50 ft for roof deck applications. Panels stack to make up the height, which is why the standard heights land on those odd fractions.

Height is a significant cost step, not a rounding. On a published four-wall woven cage, moving from the 8 ft to the 10 ft system adds several hundred dollars and moving to the 12 ft system adds several times that. Decide the height from the threat, not from the ceiling.

The climb-over problem

A partition that stops at 8 ft in a building with 24 ft clear height leaves 16 ft of open air above it. Anyone willing to climb a rack or a ladder is inside. The published position is direct: full-height panels that reach the ceiling or roof deck prevent anyone from climbing over the top.

Ceilings

Ceiling panels are an option, not standard, and they are interchangeable with wall panels, attached with slotted angle. Ceiling systems clear span up to 30 ft. Cutouts and drop-down doors are available.

Why the partition does not seal to the deck

Open mesh is not an accident of construction. The published rationale is that open wire supports airflow and fire suppression coverage, and lets existing lighting, ventilation and fire suppression systems keep working. A solid-walled room in the same position would need its own sprinkler design, lighting and ventilation. That is a genuine advantage of wire over drywall for interior enclosures.

Doors

Three published families, and the one that fits depends on the floor space you do not have.

Door type is usually decided by clearance rather than preference. A hinged door needs swing space; a sliding door needs a clear wall run beside the opening to park itself against.

Hinged doors

Published at 3 ft or 4 ft wide with a 7 ft 3-1/4 in. high opening, on two door posts with three 4 by 4 in. hinges. Universal, so left or right hand and in or out swing are set at install rather than at order.

Double hinged doors give a 6 ft or 8 ft opening at the same height, with the inactive leaf secured by a cane bolt and chain bolt: DHD-67-8 at 170 lb through DHD-87-12 at 251 lb. Specify a double where a pallet has to pass through and a sliding door will not fit.

Sliding doors

Published from 3 ft to 10 ft wide, supplied with two trolley trucks, track and hardware. Published opening heights are 8 ft 0-1/4 in. and 10 ft 0-1/4 in. These do not simply track the system height, so read the opening height from the part number rather than assuming it follows the post.

Specials

• Tunnel doors. Made to order, for conveyor and vehicle openings. Doors under 100 sq ft use an angle frame and larger ones a tube frame; the leading edge rolls on floor casters while the rear hangs from the door track.
• Vertical rise doors. Custom sized, sliding upward, with counter-balanced, pneumatic or electric operators. For openings where there is no floor space at all.
• Dutch doors. Two operating leaves, the bottom locking and the top on a spring bolt, with a 10 gauge shelf 18 in. deep fixed to the bottom leaf. This is the pass-through counter for a driver cage or tool crib.

Locks, latches and exit devices

A wide published range, and a cost spread of more than ten to one.

The lock is a separate line item from the door, and the choice spans from a simple key lock to a card reader. The published range, with the front and back designations indicating the outside and inside of the door:

Exit devices

Three are published: CB-2 a hand-sized push paddle, CB-3 a push bar running the full width of the door, and CD-4 an alarm push bar that sounds a battery-powered alarm when opened.

The cost spread here is wide, from under two hundred dollars for a key lock to well over two thousand for a card reader or an alarm bar. On a multi-cage project the locking hardware can rival the cost of the partition, so price it early rather than as an afterthought.

One, two, three and four wall cages

Buy only the walls you do not already have.

Cages are sold by how many sides they supply, and the cheapest correct answer is the one that uses your building. Published configurations:

Named applications

Beyond the generic cages, the published application list includes tool cribs, server and colocation cages, evidence enclosures, tenant storage lockers and DEA controlled substance storage. Server and colocation cages are published as an application without model numbers or standard sizes, so those are quoted from a layout rather than picked from a table.

Tenant storage lockers are a related but distinct product line, the WCTL series, in welded mesh at 7 ft 6 in. high, quoted as starters and adders. They are covered in the Lockers guide.

Pallet rack enclosures and backing

Two different products that both bolt to racking, solving two different problems.

Rack backing, for the aisle behind

Rack backing panels stop product being pushed off the back of a rack into the next aisle. This is a falling-object problem, not a security one. Panels are the welded BACK series, in widths to 12 ft and heights of 4 ft and 5 ft, attached with mounting clips for teardrop uprights in flush, 1 to 3 in. offset, or 4 to 6 in. offset versions.

Rack enclosures, for the goods inside

Rack enclosures turn a rack bay into a locked cage. The RE series is published in 27 configurations, using 10 gauge wire welded into a 2 in. by 2 in. mesh in 13 gauge frames. Beam widths of 96, 108 and 120 in., heights from 8 to 12 ft, depths of 3 to 4 ft, and upright depth options of 36, 42 and 48 in. Mounting is by flush-mount angle clips or self-tapping screws. Three mounting clips are stocked, offering offsets from flush up to 6 in. to clear overhanging pallet loads; separate 12 in. long clips allow panels to be mounted between back-to-back rows of racking.

Rack double hinged doors are published separately: RDH888 at 8 ft wide by 8 ft high, and RDH810 at 8 ft by 10 ft.

Freight on both products is palletised and charged by weight, so consolidate a rack project into one order rather than trickling panels in.

Driver and dock door cages

The MT series, and the one application with a published size table.

A driver cage puts an incoming truck driver in a defined, visible space with a counter to do paperwork, instead of loose on the dock floor. It is the cheapest single control most distribution operations can apply to dock-side shrink, and the MT series is published as a straightforward size table.

Depths run 3 ft 4 in., 4 ft 4 in., 6 ft 4 in. and 8 ft 4 in. as indicated by the second digit. Two-wall models sit in a corner and use two building walls; three-wall models need only one. Benches are published separately as MTB-4, MTB-6 and MTB-8 at 4, 6 and 8 ft long.

DEA controlled substance storage

The one application where the specification is written into federal regulation.

Cages for controlled substances are not a matter of preference. 21 CFR 1301.72(b)(4) sets out what a cage has to be, and the specification is prescriptive enough to check line by line.

How the published specification maps to it

WireCrafters publishes a DEA configuration that reads directly against those paragraphs: 10 gauge wall and ceiling panels in the 2 in. by 1 in. woven mesh, 2 in. square steel posts set no more than 10 ft apart with base plates for anchoring, horizontal reinforcement of minimum 1-1/2 in. bars every 5 ft, self-closing and self-locking doors, and 3/8 in. hardware not accessible from the exterior. Panels mount flush to the floor and stack to height, with clear-spanning ceilings.

Note two things about the mesh. The regulation's limit is openings of not more than 2-1/2 in. across the square, which both the woven 2 by 1 and the welded 2 by 2 satisfy on that dimension alone. What is published for DEA work is nonetheless the woven mesh, and that is the right instinct: the regulation sets a floor, and controlled substance storage is not the place to specify to the minimum.

Schedules and scope

Requirements tier by schedule, with Schedule I and II typically requiring the highest level of security and Schedules III through V permitted in approved secure areas such as cages, rooms or cabinets meeting the applicable standards. Confirm which schedules you handle, and which paragraph of 1301.72 applies to your registration, with your compliance officer before specifying. The published product pages scope themselves to Schedule III through V.

Operational controls sit alongside the physical ones: access logging, inventory accountability, receiving controls, cycle counts, discrepancy workflows and DEA Form 106 reporting for losses. The cage is one control among several.

Machine guarding is a different product

Do not specify Style 840 around a machine without reading this.

WireCrafters makes a dedicated machine guarding system, RapidGuard II, and it is not Style 840 with a different label. The specifications differ in the ways that matter for guarding.

Two features are specific to guarding. The lift-off design lets a panel be removed while the fixing hardware stays attached to the post, which is published against RIA TR R15.406. The tool removable hardware means a guard cannot be opened without a tool, which is published against ANSI B11.19. The 1-1/4 in. mesh opening is also markedly smaller than either partition mesh.

Style 840 has legitimate uses around equipment, particularly for perimeter access control on large cells where the barrier is about keeping people out of an area rather than guarding a specific point of operation. But the moment the question becomes how close a guard can sit to a hazard, you are in machine guarding, and that is RapidGuard territory and a risk assessment.

Installation

Bolted, not welded, and not a one-person job.

The system is entirely bolted. Panels attach to posts with the supplied nuts and bolts or with tek screws, posts anchor to the slab with 3/8 in. wedge anchors, and no welding appears anywhere in the published installation method. Panels and posts ship tagged with numbers for assembly.

Published tool list

Worth passing to whoever is installing, because most of it is not in a general toolbox:

• Chalk line and marker, tape measure, two levels
• Two drills with adjustable clutch and 3/8 in. nut driver
• Two hammer drills with 3/8 in. masonry bit
• C clamps or locking clamps
• 9/16 in. open end wrenches and 9/16 in. deep socket ratchets
• Hacksaw, a Phillips screwdriver, and a 1/2 in. deep socket or open end wrench
• Step ladders if you are installing a ceiling

Two things to get right on the day

• Hardware faces inward. The 3/8 in. hardware is specified as inaccessible from the exterior. Assembled the wrong way round, the cage can be unbolted from outside.
• Mesh runs the right way. Panels install horizontally with the 2 in. mesh opening parallel to the floor. On the woven mesh this is what puts the 1 in. dimension vertical, which is the dimension that blocks a hand.

Common and costly mistakes

Twelve things that go wrong on wire partition orders.

1. Choosing welded to save money without checking. On some published one-wall cages the woven and welded versions are within about one percent of each other, while on others the welded version is the dearer of the two. The saving people assume is there is not reliably there.
2. Choosing welded for a shorter lead time. No lead-time advantage is published, and the fulfilment window is the same for both meshes on the same cage. Get it in writing for your configuration.
3. Specifying welded where reach-through matters. A 2 in. by 2 in. opening admits a hand. If someone can reach the goods, the partition is decoration.
4. Buying a one-wall or three-wall cage against a wall that is not secure. Drywall, or a demising wall that stops at a suspended ceiling, is not a cage wall. Walk the perimeter first.
5. Stopping at 8 ft next to racking. A rack beside a partition is a ladder. Either go taller or add a ceiling.
6. Treating a ceiling panel as a floor. Ceiling panels are published as non load bearing. Nothing goes on them and nothing hangs from them.
7. Forgetting the filler panel. Buildings are not multiples of one foot. Measure the run, and order the adjustable filler for the remainder on the same order.
8. Assembling with the hardware facing out. The 3/8 in. hardware is meant to be inaccessible from outside. Backwards, the cage unbolts from the wrong side.
9. Specifying a sliding door with nowhere to slide. It needs a clear run of partition beside the opening, at least the width of the door, kept clear.
10. Locking a door someone works behind, with no exit device. Egress is a code requirement. Pair a locking door with a push paddle or bar inside.
11. Budgeting a DEA cage without the alarm. An alarm system is required by 1301.72(b)(4)(v), though the regulation permits a registrant-operated 24-hour control station as well as third-party monitoring. The anchoring method is in the regulation too.
12. Using a partition mesh for machine guarding. Guarding is RapidGuard II and a risk assessment. Safety distance is not something to read off a catalog.

Frequently asked questions

The questions that come up most often on wire partition quotes.

Quick-reference tables

Everything above, condensed.

Mesh at a glance

System specification

Regulatory reference

Specify-it checklist