Enclosure design that is settled together with the electronics.
A board that works on the bench still needs a case that holds it, protects it and lets it be mounted, charged or reached, and that is easy to leave until late. We have designed board outlines and mounting patterns for a three-board drone electronics stack, at v0 stage, and we would design the enclosure alongside the PCB for your product.
The problem
The enclosure and the board constrain each other from the first sketch. The board outline decides what the case has to hold, and the case decides where connectors, antennas, buttons and indicators can go. A device that is mounted outdoors, carried, or fitted to a vehicle will need different choices from one on a shelf, and those choices are cheaper to settle before a board layout than after. We would start from where the device will be used and how it will be reached, then fix the board outline and mounting to suit.
Questions we would raise with you early include how the device is fixed in place, how it is charged or powered, how it is opened for service, which cables and antennas have to leave the case, and what conditions it has to withstand. We would run the mechanical work together with the PCB and firmware, so that a change in one is seen by the others. Mechanical work also affects how the electronics are tested. A case that cannot be opened makes bring-up and rework harder, so we would agree early whether the first boards are tested outside it.
Material and process follow from the use: a part for a handful of prototypes is made differently from one for a production run, and we would choose with you according to how many you need and what the device has to survive. We would also consider how the case affects the radio, since a sealed or metal housing changes how an antenna performs, and for a battery product how the battery is held and replaced. Where a device has to be fixed to something else, such as a pole, a wall or a vehicle, the fixing is part of the design and not an accessory. The answers go into the board outline and the mounting before layout begins.
What we'd build
What we would design
We have no finished enclosure yet, so none is shown here. The rows describe what we would settle with you, and the one related piece of our own work is the shared mounting pattern across our three drone boards.
| Layer | What we'd do | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Mounting | A hole pattern and fixings chosen with the board, so the electronics fit the product and not the reverse. | Our three drone boards share one mounting pattern |
| Charging and access | The way a device is charged or reached for service, decided before the case is closed in. | |
| Fit | Board outlines checked against the parts list and the space available, before layout. | |
| Openings | Where connectors, antennas and indicators sit in the case, agreed together with the board layout. |
How working with us goes
- 01 Scope We agree what has to be built, where it lives and where the data goes.
- 02 Prototype Working hardware and firmware on your bench, tested against real conditions.
- 03 Pilot A small batch on real sites, with fixes folded back into the design.
- 04 Production Design for manufacture, a production run, and support once it is in the field.
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