Mechanical Design

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For mechanical design Elma-Mektron uses two different software packages. AutoCAD is used primarily as a drafting tool, however for many of our more complex mechanical designs, a fully associated 3D engineering tool is required and for these designs we use the Pro/ENGINEER mechanical design software that is considered by many to be more of an engineering tool rather than drafting tool.

AutoCAD Drafting Tool
In our ten-year history Elma-Mektron has designed in excess of a thousand products using AutoCAD; products ranging from standard commercial enclosures to bespoke conduction cooled ATR enclosures destined for the harshest of environments.

These designs have included hardware from a number of bus architecture formats, such as CompactPCI, VMEbus, VXIbus, Multibus II, PC/104, PCI/ISA, STEbus, SUNbus as well as various proprietary buses and non-bus systems. A common theme in COTS designs is to provide a package solution that protects the sometimes fragile COTS hardware so that the system can be deployed safely in hostile environments.

Elma-Mektron has developed a number of special innovative problem solving features to support this design activity. Examples include hold down clamping mechanisms for PCI cards, over-packaging of sensitive parts, use of external connector panels with circular connectors, I/O interconnect interfacing schemes as well as heater and cooling systems to manage the reduced thermal specification of some COTS parts. See ‘Problem Solving Innovation’ section of the website.

Some of the AutoCAD designs undertaken for example include:

Commercial CompactPCI 15U, 19-inch 20-slot enclosure with 25cfm airflow per slot.
Commercial VME 36U, 19-inch cabinet with three 9U enclosures plus a 6U shock isolated disk drive chassis.
Military 3/8 ATR enclosure for PC/104 quad board architecture with avionics tray for a Tornado aircraft application.
Rugged VME64 EXT 9U, 19-inch enclosure with shock isolated subrack and shuttlised disk drives.

Pro/ENGINEER Design Software
AutoCAD is used primarily as a drafting tool, however for many of our more complex mechanical designs, a fully associated 3D engineering tool is required. Some six years ago Elma-Mektron invested in the Pro/ENGINEER mechanical design software that is considered by many to be more of an engineering tool rather than drafting tool.

The advantage of using Pro/ENGINEER is that it allows the design team to create a fully assembled virtual enclosure, complete in every detail down to nuts, bolts and washers, allowing detailed interference checks to be made before any manufacturing has taken place. It also allows the design team to assign weight into components so that the finished mass and Centre of Gravity can be estimated with a good degree of accuracy, a feature previously unheard of in 2D drafting. This is a particularly useful feature when finished weight is an issue i.e. in airborne applications.

Typical examples of the use of Pro/ENGINEER has been the design of fully conduction cooled and convection cooled ATR enclosures that have involved some innovative design approaches that substantially improve the thermal efficiency of these types of enclosures.

Pro/ENGINEER has many very useful features including modelling techniques which is proving to be an invaluable aspect of this versatile mechanical design package.

Elma-Mektron uses Pro/ENGINEER’s associative, parametric and feature based functionality to its full advantage - aiding the company with its “right first time” high quality design philosophy.

Design Reference Library
To Elma-Mektron customisation is standard practice as the majority of enclosure work undertaken is tailored to the individual application requirements of our customers and involves either adaptations of our standard models or producing full custom design and manufacture. As a result our design reference library is now quite extensive and so allows us to offer a superior range of COTS / turnkey design solutions to suit our customers’ varying and diverse requirements.

Tel: +44 (0)1234 838822

Fax: +44 (0)1234 836650

Email: info@elma-mektron.co.uk