Reasons to Design a Custom Rackmount Enclosure
Built around industry standard form factors for PICMG single board computers, passive backplanes and embedded motherboards, off-the-shelf industrial rackmount enclosures provide a solid foundation for most industrial, military and embedded computing solutions. there's occasions, however, when customer applications demand a custom rackmount enclosure to meet distinctive program requirements.
1) Weight - most industrial rackmount enclosures are manufactured from cold rolled steel, as this choice provides excellent value and strength of construction. However, when Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) are a driving factor in system design, aluminum becomes the metal of choice.
2) Power - depending on chassis height (1U to 6U) and depth (15" to 28") rackmount enclosures are designed to accommodate a variety of power supply options, but when distinctive power requirements are called for, such as increased wattage or hot-swap capability, changes to the chassis may be needed to accommodate mounting requirements.
3) Storage - front mount access is typical for hard drives, often employing hot-swap drive carriers. Some rackmount enclosures even provide for internal drive mounting, yet there's occasions when customers will need additional hard drive capacity to meet application requirements, and that means adding a mounting bracket within the chassis.
4) Cooling - while all Trenton rackmount computer systems are engineered to handle thermal management issues, high-density installations of sure I/O cards, or deployment in extreme temperature environments, may want addition cooling capacity. Custom mounting brackets permit for changes in fan size, density or location.
5) Connections - applications within the areas of check and measurement or industrial automation often want connections above and beyond those found on standard industrial computers. Accommodating multiple RS-232, RS-422 or RS-485 serial ports, Ethernet ports by RJ45 jacks or SCSI connectors for external drive capacity will want a custom rear panel.
6) Mounting - custom I/O or interface cards can present mounting challenges within a rackmount chassis. This often requires the addition of self-clinching fasteners, such as threaded nuts, studs or standoffs that are mechanically pressed into the sheet metal to provide solid fastening points.
7) Branding - black powder coat is standard for industrial rackmount enclosure front panels, but generating an OEM solution may want a distinctive color and/or company logo in order to match their brand. By adding I/O cards and program, these customers can generate industry-specific computing solutions.
8) Labels - identifying the various connectors, switches and ports that appear on most rackmount computer systems is never an issue, but some customers do need to identify such parts using silkscreened callouts to match system documentation and make sure proper configuration when deployed. This is true when dealing with multiple USB ports, reset and power switches, or serial port connections.
