Review

Cabinet, enclosure, and backplane designers and manufacturers, as always, were highly accommodating to and very productive in every area of the market this year. New products made their debuts in a plethora of sizes, shapes, and materials, and with inventive protection and system-management features as well. Here are a few examples of these offerings.

Targeting a wide range of desktop and wall-mount electronics, the Unidesk-Terminal aluminum cases from OKW Enclosures (okwenclosures.com) feature die-castings, extruded profiles, stainless steel fixing screws, and a sloping front cover. The front panel is inclined by 30° for easy access to controls and is recessed for keypad installation. If Teko Enclosures (tekoenclosures.com) has its way, infrared remote control devices will find themselves swinging on users' key rings in OVO-3 series, dark-gray ABS enclosures. Available with one, two, or three pushbutton apertures, the 2.16" x 1.72" x 0.55" enclosures are available with blue, rubberized button covers.

An ever present threat to sensitive electronics, EMC is thwarted to the IEEE 1101.10 spec by Pentair Electronic Packaging's (pentair-ep.com).

RatiopacPRO series cases. Basic units provide EMC attenuation of greater than 25 dB at 1 GHz, with increased shielding available if needed. Addressing standards, Equipto Electronics (equiptoelec.com) helps users meet the latest European Union EMC Directive with its FCC/VDE-based enclosure, which employs metallizing and EMI gaskets to limit emissions. Built with cold rolled steel, the cabinet can hold over 3,000 lb. of equipment and meets military standard S10D for shock and vibration and 901 for shock.

Also addressing interference issues, Gore-Shield GS8000, a soft gasket material from W.L. Gore & Associates (gore.com), promises excellent cavity-to-cavity EMI shielding and high conductivity at low compressive forces. For D-Sub connectors, Vanguard Products' (vanguardproducts.com) low-compression, silicone-sponge core gaskets take on grounding and RFI shielding chores in 9- through 50-pin D-Sub layouts.

In terms of computing applications, there were many offerings. High-power instrumentation cards set up shop in GaGe Applied's (gage-applied.com) Mainframe 8000C 6U cPCI/PXI chassis with a 550W power supply and 217 CFM of forced air cooling. Its cPCI/PXI backplane provides eight slots that accommodate both 3U and 6U cards and is qualified to handle data throughputs of the company's CompuScope cards at 80 MB/s typical. The chassis measures 11.2" x 20.5" x 11.8", weighs in at 25 lb., and meets UL60950 and CSA C22.2 No. 60950 safety standards, as well as EN55024 EMC immunity and FCC Class A Part 15 and EN55022 Class B EMC emission requirements.

Automated, real-time test and data acquisition systems got a boost from the PXI-1042 PXI chassis from National Instruments (ni.com). The compact unit provides an eight-slot backplane with a high-power supply and integrated cooling. It also features enhanced fan control, remote power inhibit/monitoring, a low jitter internal reference clock, and external clock connectors.

The CompactPCI market saw what was reported as the first benchtop chassis for systems employing the cPCI Serial Mesh Backplane (CSMB) architecture. Developed by Tracewell Systems (tracewellsystems.com), the open-frame, 12U T-Frame chassis with CSMB allows access to boards without extender cards. The CSMB supports data transfer rates of up to 700 Gb/s and has its data channels deployed in a mesh configuration, giving each slot a set of interconnects to every other slot.

System management chores and cooling concerns were the primary focus of Elma Electronic's (elma.com) 4U, five-slot horizontal Advanced-TCA (ATCA) chassis. The compact chassis makes ample use of the company's IPM Sentry shelf manager, which performs basic voltage, fan speed, and temperature monitoring. It adjusts fan speed in relation to temperature and sends remote alarms via an RS-232 or 10/100 Ethernet

interface. IPM Sentry can also be programmed to detect backplane topology and maintain system-event and sensor-data logs.

—Mat Dirjish

Outlook

Semper Facilis, Semper Callidus
As in the past, enclosure and backplane designers will be ever ready and ever resourceful (for readers not versed in Latin) in meeting the challenges presented by every sector of the technology community, whether it be meeting size and aesthetic requirements or addressing new standards and shielding issues. And their market will remain strong in the future because every electronic product needs protection from both the environment and, sometimes, its user.

Compared to other product areas, we do not see too many industry firsts in the cabinet and enclosure industry. However, we do see a good deal of industry-only type products—custom designs whose life span equals that of the device it houses.

—MD