The MILCOTS-4x (PIP40 Family) was recognized as Gold honoree among the best by the 2020 Military & Aerospace Electronics Innovators Awards.
The Scenario
Rugged solutions used in defense, traffic or maritime applications need to withstand sever shock and vibrations as they are installed in vehicles, airplanes or ships. Generally, the interface of those solutions are wired to some heavy duty connectors like MIL-DTL-38999 or similar. A critical point with those connections is the mismatch of the wires that need to be used. On the CPU board side, the wire needs to be as thin as possible and on the MIL 38999 connectors side it requires the best match for the connector pin. Generally, a rather bulky wire. Hence, on both sides in most cases one does not have the right wire size. Therefore, one needs to compromise on the wire size on both sides. Not ideal for a reliable long-term system solution. In the described environments one can expect continuous vibration, maybe combined with shock and other extreme conditions like temperature. Soldered or crimped wires have the risk, even if they have a perfect size, that the joint will break sooner or later during its operation. As described in most cases the perfect size wire cannot be chosen.
The Solution
To overcome this condition, MPL designed adapter PCB’s that on one end interfaces directly, without the need of wires, to the CPU board. An on the other hand the adapter PCB is designed such that the interfaces are on individual high density lockable headers. The pins of the MIL-DTL-38999 connector or another rugged connector are directly soldered on a Rigid-Flex PCB. The flexible part of the Rigid-Flex has a mating parts of the lockable header of the adapter PCB and the rugged connector can be installed straight into the IP67 housing. With this unique solution the connections will be reliable over the lifetime of the product and will withstand easy any shock and/or vibration condition.
The benefit of the above is obvious and meets 100% the need of any rugged environment and application. With the 9th generation of INTEL CPU and the flexibility to add basically any function independent whether this is ARINC, 1553, GPS WLAN, LTE, GPIOs, CAN to name a few.
In addition the key is to move from standard PIP 4x to a MILCOTS 4x with the same internal boards allowing to create a lab prototype for verification in a few weeks and in parallel the MIL version is designed.
