Re-engineered fan trays chill costs

Jon Lawson

Verotec, the UK- and US-based manufacturer of standard and custom electronics enclosures, recently won a multi-year contract from a major North American manufacturer of flight simulators to supply significant volumes of application-specific subrack front panels.

As a direct result, Verotec has now been tasked with re-engineering existing designs of three and six fan monitored fan trays. The critical requirements were to meet or exceed the existing airflow, monitoring functionality and acoustic noise specifications in the same physical size at lower cost.

The fan tray’s framework material was changed from aluminium to stronger galvanised steel, which not only saved on material and plating costs but reduced the number of parts and therefore the fabrication cost. A new monitoring and alarm PCB with six channels was designed in surface mount technology, reducing population costs and benefiting from economies of scale. The alarm connector now mounts directly on to a PCB header to do away with an existing cable loom, again saving labour and material costs. Finally, and significantly in cost terms, expensive foam packaging was replaced with more environmentally-friendly cardboard.