Although sometimes overlooked, proper mechanical design is critical in the electronics industry. Improper thermal designs severly limit electrical performance, including reliabilty as the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) is closely related to the average die junction temperature. Improperly design mechancial structures will hit resonance or transmit it within the enclosure, which creates severe fatigue at best or a broken solder joint, trace, or component as a worst case.
Environmental factors are a concern as well, as some ruddedized applications will need to survive severe mechanical shock, termperatures swings or acceleration launch shock.
FTS has dozens of new designs in the field that have survived hours of harsh and severe conditions. Mechanical Engineering factors include material choice and type, plating and overal construction of the module, card or box. As with everything, cost usually is a driving factor of newly design modules, including component fabrication type, use of Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) components and ease of assembly.
FTS is driven by mechanical performance of its products and will guarentee that the design will exceed thermal and environmental performance parameters, including thermal shock and cycling, fog, salt spray and servere mechanical shock or high vibration environments. Previous designs included:
- VITA spec 48.2 (conduction cooled) and 48.3 (convection cooled) Module designs
- 6U Communcation upgrade sheet metal enclosure including fan, CFD simulations, VITA chassis and cards, D38999 MIL-DTL connectors
- 1U Rack mounted Anti-jam model (miliary)
- VITA spec Antijam GPS module
- Test Box for 787 MAX to test and qualify fire suppression system
