I have a lot of gear, medium voltage controllers and such, that are outdoors in the elements. The labels have to be mounted on the outside of the enclosures as they are stand alone units. The problem is the labels fade after a few months. Has anyone found a solution for this, maybe a cover for the label or some kind of UV film to protect the label?

Are you using a print company to do the labels? If so, you may want to talk to them about different materials as I have seen many outdoor equipment labeled and years later, still legible.

If printing in house, you may want to find out from the company that supplies the label stock about what the options are.

I use vinyl labels for my site and I haven't noticed any problem with the outdoor ones.

I have been experiencing the same issues for outdoor equipment. It was recommended by a label company to use a UV protective coating (spray or laminate). Here are two products I will be trying:

http://www.krylon.com/products/uvresist ... r-coating/
http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/e ... 208&rt=rud

The krylon spray seems to allow for much easier application, especially if you have many labels to do.

We use a Brady Tagus T300 printer with labels that have preprinted headers. The label text that we print holds up fine, but the colored headers fade outdoors. The red Danger labels are the worst because the word danger is white and the red background completely disappears after a number of years, so the word Danger become white on white and disappears as well. Brady doesn't have any outdoor / UV preprinted labels for this printer.

We have tested two clear overlaminates that have both performed well. After 21 months I can't see any fading. The two overlaminates are:
Papilio #WOL9512G. You can get 10 9.5" x 12" sheets for $11.60
Panduit #C550X750YK. These are about 5.5" x 7.5" and are about $2.50 each www.onlinecomponents.com

I started an experiment many years ago where I placed a number of labels outdoors to see how they held up. The location was the Eastern facing side of a high mountain desert pad mounted transformer, dark green paint job. Elevation was over 5000 ft, summer temps could exceed 100 deg. F, winter temps could drop below -30 deg F. I pulled several pre-printed labels from our electrical shop stock and then printed some labels on various colors of vinyl stock using standard vinyl (3M - 3 mil I think). In general, the pre-printed labels were all faded white in a year. The vinyl labels had not faded, peeled, or cracked even after seven years. They did get brittle so that they could no longer be removed in one piece. The ones I removed did not leave any visible residue either, which was nice. I had also tried some engraved multi-color lamacoid material in a different location. There was some yellowing of the white background, but they remained legible.

we do replace plenty of labels and sign boards. so far best is engraved one.
we do engraving using engraving machine.

try it.