| Ingress Protection Rating
Electrical equipment often has an IP rating (International/Ingress Protection) defined by the IEC 70-1 – IP. An IP code usually consists of 2 numbers and is similar to IPXX where the first number indicates the level of protection against solid objects and that the enclosure provides against access to hazardous parts (table 2), the second digit refers to the level of protection from liquids. The digits indicate conformity with the conditions summarized in the table below.
Table 1. Protection against dust and liquids
* pressure level is specified separately.
Only the IP codes summarized above are possible as if one of the digits is high, the other one is also high (for example, if a device is protected enough to be immersed in water, it means that it is also protected enough against dust, therefore an IP rating like IP37 is impossible). Besides, there is also IP69 rating for high-pressure applications.
Table 2. Protection against access to hazardous parts
The most common IP rating for household appliances is IP20 (sometimes “0” is replaced with “X” and an IP rating is similar to IP2X), for professional appliances is IP44.
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