Small form factor cases for various board standards

Jon Lawson

Pentair offers customded cases with fanless (conduction) cooling based on the Schroff Interscale platform for the most common board standards: ATX, Micro ATX, Mini-ITX, Embedded NUC, Pico ITX, Raspberry Pi 2 Model B as well as Arduino.

Small universal cases with efficient heat dissipation are in great demand. While processor performance is increasing steadily, systems are becoming smaller and must also support the increasing heat dissipation requirements of different bus standards used in embedded and automation deployments.

Wherever small, fanless systems are required, Schroff Interscale C conduction cooled cases, which are specifically developed for small form factor electronics, are used. The case consists of three parts and are easily assembled with only two screws. The Schroff  Interscale C platform can support ingress protection (IP) up to IP 30. The case's special inter-locking design ensures an integrated EMC protection of 20dB at 2GHz. Assembling different modules, riser boards or internal power supplies is easy thanks to the flexible Interscale platform. A wide variety of options for different cutout dimensions, locations, powder coating / printing as well as a wide range of accessories and mounting options (wall-mounting, horizontal rails with lips, supporting feet, etc.) guarantees a high level of flexibility for every application.

Case designs with optional cooling fin heights and integrated heat sinks are available for different cooling outputs. As a result, solid cooling blocks used with thermal gap pads with applied thermal paste are feasible, as well as the FHC (Flexible Heat Conductors) developed by Pentair. Different speeds of processors can be assembled to the FHC while maintaining a consistent contact area, thus eliminating the need to use a thermally conductive pad. The FHC is designed to create a tolerance compensation surface area, which leads to significantly increased heat dissipation (70 mm FHC up to 70 percent). The existing mounting points on the printed circuit board are used for assembling the heat conductors to the processors.

Each customer can create his or her own individual case design with the Schroff Interscale family of small form factor enclosures: different dimensions, board standards, fanless - conduction cooling options, cutouts, colours, heat sinks (integrated into the top cover), printing and many more options are available.