If your embedded system requires a custom enclosure, you may anticipate having to approach an industrial design house and commission the enclosure design as a separate project. This adds cost and can increase the risks as you may face communication difficulties and hold-ups between suppliers.
With Blue Chip Technology’s in-house mechanical design engineering capabilities, you have the option of keeping all aspects of your project with just the one partner. With over 30 years of mechanical design experience and the advantage of being co-located with the electronics design and manufacturing teams, our mechanical design engineers are best suited to take care of your enclosure design.
Enclosure Design Options
Depending on your project’s status, we have a variety of options to cater for your unique situation.
Customer Specification
If you have a fully detailed specification we can design an enclosure to match, whether that be keeping the internals above or below a certain temperature, placing interface connectors at specific locations or ensuring communications signals are above a certain strength.
Match an Aesthetic
If your product is committed to a certain aesthetic, for instance being part of a larger product range or in keeping with your brand, we have the design experience to create a suitable enclosure.
‘From Scratch’
If your project is in its early stages or you are unsure of the requirements of your enclosure, we can work with you on a design that will meet the challenges of the end product’s environment and application.
Our Collaborative, Iterative Approach
While we can take care of the enclosure design in its entirety – working with our internal electronics design and manufacturing teams – our friendly and approachable mechanical design team typically work in tandem with our customers and any 3rd party design teams that may also have involvement.
We take an iterative approach to designing our products and enclosures are no exception. We have a large-bed 3D printer which enables us to turn ideas into a tangible usable prototypes in hours. With feedback from our customers, we continually improve the design until it reaches the required state.
Materials & Components
We are very experienced in designing enclosures for our own and our customer’s products with the following components:
- Plastic – injection mould, vac form, etc
- Extrusion – aluminium
- Sheet Metal – aluminium, stainless steel, steel, etc
- Cable assemblies – rail, marine, military, industrial, etc
- Passive cooling – heat pipes, etc
3D CAD Designs
We use the Creo Parametric 3D CAD system (formerly Pro Engineer) which can seamlessly integrate with CAD models authored in other systems, so if you already have an existing design or concept we can build a solution from that.
Our 3D CAD software supports solid modelling, direct modelling, robust assembly modelling, detailed documentation including 2D and 3D drawings, technical surfacing, freestyle surfacing, sheet metal modelling, cable modelling, and more.
If you have any questions about your project or our enclosure design services, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
