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Thanks Rod, the external antenna was my next move.
I am in Sydney, any suggestion on model number that is known to work with LC2.9.4 ?

The Extender has been set up to use 2.4 GHz from the start.

The engineer in me wants to know why the failure in the cubicle.
I will do some more testing.
John.

Seems the card uses a R8168 interface. The R8168 requires a DKMS driver to get acceptable RT  performance. Not sure how that goes with a Pi. I would not use it for ethercat but would be fine for general network use.

Try 2.4 GHz. 5 GHz is not as reliable in an industrial setting and has much shorter range. I turned off all my 5G wifi

Failing that use a wifi USB dongle that has an external antenna and get a SMA bulkhead mount cable to extend it outside of the cabinet

Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB has operated a very conventional x,y,z mill with a Mesa 7i96 for a couple of years.
WiFi never worked and has been a back-burner issue for a year or more.

Two cubicles:
 - Power: VFD, stepper supply, general supplies, AC/DC relays,
 - Electronics: RPi, stepper drivers, DC relays, power supplies,
     - minimal 240VAC cabling for power supplies, monitor.
 Monitor, keyboard and mouse cabled.

WiFi-Extender for workshop 4m from RPi.
Test set-up on workshop bench 6m from Extender.
Bench desktop ethernet cabled to extender, has always had reliable WiFi.

I have two RPi; 4GB and 8GB.
The 4GB is currently LC2.9.2, and I downloaded LC2.9.4 recently to a separate SD card.

Investigated:
 - both 4GB and 8GB operate WiFi with either L2.9.2 or LC2.9.4 on the bench no problem,
 - confirmed linked to the Extender by switching it Off (house WiFi 5G is at -70dBm),
 - both operated with Mesa card Off,
 - both fail to launch WiFi in electronic cubicle when mounted or hung in free space.

Also:
 - both have identical (as close as I can tell) WiFi set-up,
 - both detect the Extender and show signal level at -40dBm,
 - both fail to scan for ssid using menu-config in LC2.9.4,
 - both respond to "iw dev wlan0 scan" with response for Extender at -40dBm.

Note: test in cubicle has all non-essential supplies Off: VFD, steppers, Mesa, general control,
nothing else in workshop energised, other than air conditioner and desktop.

Need suggestions on which stone to turn over next.
John.