Elma cooling platform embraces AFT per VITA 48.8 standard

In a innovation, Elma Type 39A CompacFrame holds up to accepts up to five 1-slot VPX power & ground backplanes for plug-in cards on 1”, 1.2” or 1.5” pitch designed for use with VITA 48.8 air flow-through (AFT) cooling. The platform facilitates new card and system design implementations and testing for a range of rugged environments, including electronic warfare (EW), C5ISR, target tracking and display, navigation systems and threat detection as well as in sensor payloads and image and data processing applications.

Ram Rajan, senior vice president of engineering for Elma, noted, “Supporting air flow-through cooling in our CompacFrame is one of the many ways Elma is delivering test and development solutions to help our customers meet the demands of SWaP optimization in small form factor systems.”

With an updated, lightweight construction, Elma’s CompacFrame series is tilted up 5 degrees for easier viewing and plug-in cards insertion. User interfaces are designed for easy access, simplifying and reducing design time, and an integrated carrying handle ensures portability.

The two other standard CompacFrames include a slimline version that accommodates open standards-based backplanes of up to four slots and the mid-range version, supporting up to eight slots aligned to The Open Group Sensor Open System Architecture (SOSA) Technical Reference Standard 1.0.

VITA 48.8 helps reduce weight and cost for high density, high power dissipation of 3U and 6U module based systems by eliminating the use of card retainers and ejector/injector handles, instead using lightweight jack screws for insertion and extraction into a chassis. The elimination of module-to-chassis conduction cooling means VITA 48.8 drives innovative use of new lightweight polymer or composite-based chassis.