cDT provides controller for new laser marking system

Electrox is the only UK designer and manufacturer of engraving lasers used for marking a wide variety of different products. These include text and graphics on plastic computer components, automotive products, electronic components, medical implants, surgical instruments and promotional products and giftware among many other applications.

John Blenkinsopp, senior development engineer at Electrox, commented, “On discussing our requirements with cDT’s design team, we realised there was an opportunity to take advantage of their expertise and outsource much of the work for this element of the project.”

“We had already sourced a suitable enclosure so CDT designed a keypad to fit this, machining the box to provide a finished product,” he continued.

At this stage cDT also became involved in producing the electronics to fit inside the enclosure. Electrox’s electronics design team sent over schematics of the circuit for cDT to produce a new PCB tailored to fit the new enclosure, a process that required shrinking the circuit board to a quarter of its original size.

Finally, cDT tied up the remaining aesthetic matters such as mounting a liquid crystal display (LCD), machining and mounting a plastic window in the enclosure and mounting the finished assembly to deliver a fully tested and working control pendant to Electrox.

John Blenkinsopp concluded, “cDT produced prototypes of the various components and progressed to making up pre-prototype units for evaluation by our engineers, marketing department and end-users. These were well received and the quality of finished production units has been equally impressive.”

Ian Watson, cDT’s marketing director, added, “This project is an excellent illustration of our ability to deliver flexible integrated solutions for low volume production runs. Our ability to design and manufacture a sealed membrane keypad to fit into the customer’s choice of enclosure as well as machining the enclosure and producing and integrating a PCB to deliver fully assembled and tested control pendants enabled Electrox to concentrate on its core strengths of designing and manufacturing high quality laser marking systems.”

Based in Oxfordshire and with more than 15 years experience of providing custom solutions for customers in the electronics industry, customDesignTechnologies encompasses Bafbox custom enclosures, customKeypads membrane switch panels and customAssembly for costeffective and flexible electronic and mechanical assembly services for companies looking to outsource manufacturing.