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Home
> Custom Project Examples.
 Follows
are just a few of the many custom designs, rackmount and
non-rackmount, we have designed and manufactured. These
examples highlight our capabilities as well as provide examples
for future projects for other clients. Chassis Plans' engineers
have been providing innovative solutions to industry since
1985 and are conversant in all aspects of design and agency
certification. We have provided simple sheet metal boxes
through highly complex ship-board Navy certified designs
and telco Nebs certified systems. Please visit our web page
which details our design
philosophy and the steps involved in bringing a design
to market.
From prototype to production, Chassis Plans prides itself
on quality rackmount enclosures. For turnkey projects or
specialized engineering services, Chassis Plans understands
how to overcome the technical challenges involved in converting
innovative concepts into successful, timely products.
Our design philosophy is to provide exceptionally engineered,
cost effective industrial computers and rackmount enclosures
at a competitive price. Chassis Plans provides a turnkey
solution for custom industrial rackmount systems, allowing
clients to have quality industrial chassis with minimal
investment in time or money.
Technically
sophisticated
Incredibly
well documented
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 The
customer provides a network appliance which sits on
and monitors the internet backbone in a Central Office
environment. The project required a two step approach
to satisfy their program requirements.
The first milestone required Chassis Plans to quickly
develop and provide multiple development systems to
manage their custom hardware. These systems, while
not NEBS compliant, were designed to be close to those
standards. The system was manufactured from high strength
aluminum with a limited depth. Cooling is front to
rear and the motherboard was rotated 90 degrees to
allow internal access to the I/O connectors.
The second stage of the program requires a NEBS compliant
and certified system for installation into Central
Offices. The systems will be in full compliance with
NEBS GR-0063.
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 The
customer liked the Chassis Plans' W05 wall mount chassis
but needed to mount several industrial Ethernet hubs
inside. They also wanted to prevent falling debris
in the environment from getting inside the unit via
the air exhaust vents and cable passages.
 Starting
with the standard W05 Solidworks model, we were able
to extend the top plenum to accommodate the added
hardware and ventilation requested by the customer.
Additional wire harnesses were designed and fabricated
to power the hubs via Molex MiniFit connectors installed
into the rear panel.
In addition, the unit is controlled by an AC breaker
on the side. This required selection of a motherboard
with a BIOS support "last state" power control.
The power and reset switches normally associated with
an ATX style computer were removed.
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 Imagine
Innovations has a compelling system to remotely
monitor and control coin operated car washes. Chassis
Plans provided extensive modifications to the standard
W5
WallMount Enclosure to provide mounting for the
various digital control modules and boards required
to interface with the car wash equipment.
The modifications included adding a small LCD touch
screen to the front door, adding 110VAC outlets to
the side wall, modifying the door to hold Opto 22
boards, modifying the motherboard plate to hold digital
control modules, and changing the bottom to provide
room for installed components.
The chassis was painted to the customer specification
and a logo screened to the door.
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 This
renowned manufacturer of advanced digital signal processing
systems providing telemetry capture and analysis to
aircraft and missile flight test ranges required a
chassis for their new PCI based system. Chassis Plans
designed and built a passive backplane system providing
mounting for their status display as well as a rear
panel dog house for interfacing the myriad cables
and signals to the plug-in PCI data acquisition cards.
The prototype system was designed and fabricated in
record time to  allow
the customer to display this important new product
at their one major show of the year.
The 14-slot backplane can accommodate 8 full-length
and 3 short PCI cards. The system is well cooled with
two 120x38mm fans. A redundant power supply assures
uninterrupted data acquisition without risk of power
supply failure. The front panel provides two Storcase
SATA drive carriers and a slim DVD.
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 This
customer required a custom enclosure to control IC
mask pattern generation. This 6U rack mount system
includes a 19-slot PCI Express backplane, dual Xeon
System Host Board and redundant power supply. In addition,
provision was made in the chassis for a 24VDC supply,
PLC and Safety Relay. Particular attention was paid
to cooling the multitude of high power plug-in boards.
Of particular note, the system includes a "dog
house" on the rear of the chassis providing a
cable interface between the plug-in card connectors
and a custom PCB on the rear of the chassis. This
is a common system modification other customers have
required.
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 Northrop
Grumman required a rugged computer system to build
a Digital Voice Recorder for use aboard Navy ships.
The system records virtually all audio traffic on
the ship including radio traffic, PA, and bridge conversations.
The rack system is designed to meet Mil
Spec 901D, Grade A.
Included is a 19-slot PCI Express backplane and dual
Xeon System Host Board, four hot swap Ultra 320 SCSI
drives, dual DVD/RW drives, and redundant power. The
front mounted Touch Entry Device provides system monitoring
and control.
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The
customer had seen a custom chassis on our Did
You Know Paint and Logo Brochure and wanted a
similar look. The result is our standard E1Chassis
2U rack mount enclosure with a new 3-dimensional door,
custom paint on the lid and ears, and customer logo
silk screened on the face of the door. Chassis Plans
provided fully integrated turn-key systems to the
customer.
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 Raytheon
required a quantity of small enclosure and cables
to house an F18 radio controller in a ground application.
Chassis Plans leveraged an existing design to engineer
the enclosure. Utilizing previous art allowed for
a low engineering cost and quick turn on the project.
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 L-3
required a very rugged 4U enclosure for their
JRE-DLT program. The system required that two
custom PCI backplanes be installed with XPT
Dual XEON processors. One side was configured
as a Windows XP Client and the other side was
running Sun Solaris as a Server. The chassis
provides a redundant power supply, two hot swap
hard drives, and two DVD drives.
A custom rear panel and front panel insert were
developed. A custom power control PCB was also
developed to provide a time delay for system
shutdown to prevent disk corruption. The system
was ruggedized for installation in a transit
case for battle field deployment.
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 The
Dini Group, a local designer and manufacturer of highly
sophisticated logic emulation boards, approached Chassis
Plans to design and manufacture the enclosure for
their new DN8000K10 Virtex4 based ASIC prototyping
system. This incredibly advanced emulation engine
required a 15x22.1" PCB to hold the 16 FPGA chips
and 9 daughter cards to provide emulation of up to
24 million gates in logic and memory designs. A board
this large is quite fragile and very expensive.
Chassis Plans designed an enclosure that provides
a removable inner chassis to hold the PCB allowing
the board to be placed on a bench for testing and
configuration, yet be fully protected. The inner chassis
fits inside a custom 19" rack mount enclosure
for system operation. The chassis provides system
support, excellent cooling, a 600W power supply, and
adaptable rear panel I/O.
 Close
collaboration between the PCB and mechanical design
teams assured the enclosure system performed as required
on the first design spin.
Go to The
Dini Group 'Son Of Monster' page for more information
and photos of this amazing system. Click the two photos
to the right for larger views.
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 Koolspan
had been marketing their SME Lock Private Networking
appliance in a single channel version. They wanted
to expand to the enterprise marketplace by offering
a multi-channel rackmount version.
Chassis Plans designed a 1U enclosure that allowed
four of their Private
Network modules to be rackmounted. The enclosure provides
redundant power supplies for fail safe operation.
Accommodating the preexisting boards required an innovative
front panel design with symmetrical overlapping module
ears for retention. EMI compliance is assured by the
use of spring finger EMI gaskets. The lid is designed
for use with tamper resistant screws.
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 A
large multinational integrated circuit manufacturer
required a new enclosure and integrated system
to replace the ancient VAX computers originally
used. This required Chassis Plans to engineer
an enclosure that fit an odd sized hole in their
equipment. Cooling was a primary concern. There
is also a custom controller interface that had
to be accommodated.
The Chassis Plans Sales Engineer worked closely
with the customer and Integration Department
to define a leading edge computing platform
using new long life components. The result was
a system that provided significant productivity
improvements over the original VAX systems with
assured long term availability.
The system was certified to virtually all safety
and emissions regulations including CE, Korean,
Taiwanese, Chinese and Japanese certifications.
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 The
customer required a custom chassis to house two FPGA
development boards to monitor network traffic in an
effort to reduce network overhead and improve client
responsiveness.
Chassis Plans provided a custom network appliance
type design with a 1U redundant power supply, mounting
for the two boards, rear panel connectors, and two
fans. The rack ears are a unique design allowing 4-post
or 2-post rack mounting.
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 The
customer was purchasing systems from Sun Microsystems
to house a Sun SCSI tape subsystem drive. The enclosure
from Sun was too deep for a particular application
leaving the customer without a solution. Chassis Plans
provided a specially integrated 1U F6000 chassis.
We had to design and fabricate new cables, change
the power switch, blank the reset switch, and incorporate
a brass grounding stud on the rear panel.
The result is an attractive chassis with a door covering
the tape drive and controls that perfectly fits the
customer's requirements. Chassis Plans is providing
a Turn Key fully integrated solution for this customer.
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 Lockheed
contracted with Chassis Plans to design and manufacture
an LCD/Keyboard combination for use aboard nuclear
submarines. The principle use is for officers to be
able to connect to both the secure and non-secure
systems from their quarters.
Included is a 17" TFT LCD, full feature keyboard
and glidepoint mouse device and two USB ports. Mounted
inside is an Icron USB hub extender allowing the keyboard,
glidepoint, and two USB ports to interface via Cat-5
cable with a server anywhere on the boat.
The challenging specification included footprint and
size constraints and a weight limit of 18lbs. Chassis
Plans delivered a system weighing only 12lbs much
to the delight of the customer.
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 Haden
asked Chassis Plans to design a controller for their
Liquid Paint Application Control System. The wall
mounted enclosure featured a passive backplane, single
board computer and their control cards. The lid was
designed to accept different overlays allowing multiple
uses for the same enclosure. See the Haden
Datasheet.
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 A
manufacturer of Digital Video Recorders and related
digital security products approached Chassis Plans to
design and build their next generation security appliance.
Difficult design constraints included a depth limit
of 21", four high speed large hot swap raid drives,
a vibration isolated fan system to prevent drive errors,
high component density, and an obstructed rear panel
which limited cooling flow. The customer had rigorous
component temperature limits. Chassis Plans delivered
two different system configurations to satisfy a changing
specification. The customer had a short time-to-market
window.
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 An
affiliate company of the Digital Video Recorder
shown above required a custom enclosure for
a multichannel video amplifier system. Chassis
Plans worked closely with the board designer
on the layout of the PCB to ensure good heat
management, component selection to fit a 1U
enclosure, and ease of assembly. The systems
are being widely installed in casinos for camera
management.
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 A
large defense contractor specializing in tactical
ground control shelters required a rugged diskless
system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle control. Time to
delivery was critical.
Chassis Plans leveraged an existing COTS design to
quickly and inexpensively meet the requirement. Starting
with the D3Chassis,
we shortened the chassis to 18" and designed
a new front panel to maximize cooling flow. The chassis
accommodates an EATX motherboard and a redundant 2U
power supply. Three 90mm cooling fans and generous
chassis openings assure the installed components are
well cooled.
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 Advanced
Mezzanine Cards, or AMC modules, were originally developed
to add I/O capability to CPCI and ATCA products. An
AMC products developer approached Chassis Plans to design
and manufacture the first rack mount system to enable
the use of 10 AMC modules in a 2U enclosure. This is
bleeding edge technology and Chassis Plans engineers
worked closely with the AMC hardware manufacturer to
provide a system to the customer in record time for
display at SuperComm 2005. The system was designed with
Nebs certification in mind.
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 The
customer had been purchasing a custom power supply enclosure
from a local vendor for several years. They required
several enhancements to the design and the vendor had
no engineering documentation. Chassis Plans reverse
engineered the enclosure to fit within their system.
In addition to their required changes, Chassis Plans'
engineers proposed several changes to lower their costs
and simplify the system assembly.
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 Custom
paint and logo to customer specification is our most
common special. In this case, the customer wanted the
entire chassis painted to a Pantone specification and
their logo silk screened on the door. The base chassis
is the C3CHASSIS.
Multicolor logos and front panel silk screened accents
can "spiff up" a chassis look and make it
your product instead of some generic computer. |
 A
military customer required an ultra high resolution
LCD display / keyboard but had a height limit of 1U.
In addition, there was limited depth available. Chassis
Plans performed by modifying our standard CPCSD1-17
Clamshell Keyboard LCD to incorporate the Samsung LTM190
panel with a proprietary high performance LCD controller.
There is no 1U keyboard LCD display with a larger monitor
or higher resolution. |
A
major defense electronics manufacturer approached
Chassis Plans to design and manufacture the enclosure
for their sophisticated high speed switch. The
system houses 3 hot swap modular cards, rear mounted
CPU module, dual hot swap power supplies, 4 hot
swap fans and an internal backplane tying all
the electronics together. Several innovative design
features were incorporated to enable the system
to meet specification.
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 A
manufacturer of PCI silicon products for PCI Express
interface needed a development platform for their customers.
Chassis Plans provided a simple 1U enclosure to mount
their PCB. Using a modified off the shelf 1U ATX power
supply simplified their product and lowered their costs.
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A customer required a light weight 1U LCD Display /
Keyboard to fit in a Hartig travel case. The requirement
was a weight less than 22 pounds and an installed depth
less than 20 inches. Chassis Plans exceeded the design
requirement by producing a keyboard weighing 19.6 lbs
with an installed depth of 19 inches. There is no lighter
or shorter keyboard on the market with these features.
Note: This display is in production and available for
sale to other OEM's. |
 A
major supplier of battlefield qualified systems required
a continued supply of the Appro 4408 chassis which Appro
no longer offered. The specification from their military
customer did not allow for another chassis to be substituted.
Chassis Plans exactly reproduced the Appro 4408 chassis
dimensionally and functionally. The chassis looks exactly
the same. Turn around time on the project was a short
5 weeks.
Note: This chassis is in production and available for
sale to other OEM's.
|
 A
large highly respected manufacturer of chip manufacturing
equipment required a very custom rackmount system. A
limiting factor was a depth limit of 16.63" and
the I/O had to be accessible at the front. An Intel
EATX Dual Xeon Server Board fits and provides 1 I/O
slot. A hard drive and 1U power supply are included.
Seven high flow 40x38mm fans cool the system. Chassis
Plans provides totally integrated systems.
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 In
conjunction with the 1U system shown above, the customer
also required a 2U chassis of similar construction.
A limiting factor was a depth limit of 16.63" and
the I/O had to be accessible at the front. An Intel
EATX Server Board fits and provides 2 I/O slots. A hard
drive, slim CD and 2U power supply are included. Three
high flow 80mm fans cool the system. Chassis Plans provides
totally integrated systems.
|
 A
leading company in audio noise control for broadcast
and film required a quantity of small, light 4U enclosures
for mounting in a Hartig portable case. We modified
our standard C3Chassis
to exactly meet their requirements. Modifications included
an aluminum construction instead of steel for lighter
weight, low noise fans, modified rear panel including
BNC connectors, modified drive bay area, customer specific
paint and logo.
|
 An
aerospace company needed a 1U chassis to hold 2 removable
SCSI drives or a mix of removable drives and tape drives.
The chassis had to be 16 inches deep and 16.75 inches
wide which precluded an off-the-shelf solution. Good
cooling was required.
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 A
defense contractor required a large quantity of "flight
line proof" rackmount keyboard/LDCs. They liked
the features of the CPS217 but had special ruggedization
requirements. Chassis Plans was able to modify the standard
CPS217
to include:
Mag-Floride coated protective
glass over the LCD
Aluminum construction
instead of steel
Special Cherry keyboard
w/ touch pad
Shortened length for installation
in a Hartig case
Note: This display is in production and available for
sale to other OEM's. |
In the winter they build ice roads. You can't drive
to the oil wells in the summer because the tundra is
too soft. This international oil services company needed
a chassis that would survive continuous bouncing and
banging in the back of the data logging truck as they
drove on these ice roads. Hard to get parts in the middle
of Winter in the far North oil country when your computer
gets bounced to death.
Chassis Plans created what has to be one of the most
rugged chassis every built. Each of the drive trays
is held by four thumb screws, two in front and two in
back. Five SCSI drives are arrayed behind the air filter
for good cooling. A card hold-down is tailored to the
installed cards. Special zero backlash slides are used.
All stainless steel hardware was installed for harsh
high salinity environments. Color matching was provided
as well as a standard silk screen with the company's
logo. Strict depth and front panel requirements were
met to comply with the customer's specification. Chassis
Plans was able to create an enclosure that will accommodate
their needs for years to come. |
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After designing and producing a large quantity of the
5U chassis shown above, the customer required the same
chassis features in a 4U enclosure. The resulting design
is identical in all regards in a smaller package.
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Spawar came to Chassis Plans to design a Mil Spec
chassis that would be light, extremely rugged, adaptable,
and able to satisfy the rigorous shock and vibration
specification in 901D. The "Rock" was the
result.
This is an aluminum and stainless enclosure providing
redundant power, 4 5.25" external drives, 2 3.5"
external drives, and 2 internal 3.5" drives.
Both Intel and Sun motherboards can be accommodated.
The chassis passed Mil Spec 901D (Barge Test). If
you are not familiar with the Barge Test, go here
for some entertaining video (Large File - 27Mb).
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The DOD required a robust 20-slot chassis for use in
remote locations world-wide. Critical performance issues
had to be met. The system had to be easy to install
and maintain with minimal MTTR. A defined drive mix
as well as depth issues precluded using an off-the-shelf
solution.
Chassis Plans successfully met the design challenge
offering an innovative solution with a swing-down and
removable drive/power supply sub chassis. This approach
greatly simplified initial integration and on-site service.
The top section accommodates any 20-slot backplane offering
20 full slots with great cooling for the installed high
power cards. |
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Chassis Plans was approached by an arcade game manufacturer
to provide a ruggedized PC chassis able to fit existing
game cabinets and to survive the abuse and transportation
loads imposed on these cabinets. Microsoft and Intel
were supporting the Arcade PC initiate to use simple
PC components for arcade games instead of the historically
used dedicated boards. The problem was office type computers
were failing. See ArcadePC
Drop for a graphic example of what this system can
survive.
The resulting design was the first single-sided arcade
chassis allowing access to all I/O and drives from the
same side. The chassis can be supplied with shock mounts
tailored to the specific application.
Variations of the original design have now been installed
is such diverse applications as ATMs and kiosks, lumber
mill saw control where constant vibrations and shocks
were killing other systems, chip testing systems where
cooling fan vibration is an issue, public transportation.
This design is perfect for any application which requires
an easy to service yet rugged shock and vibration resistant
design. Shock mounting the entire system is the only
way to assure component survivability. See our White
Paper on Shock and Vibration.
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The customer, a large multinational printing press manufacturer,
needed to replace an existing card cage with a newer
model. The backplane had changed and his offshore supplier
was not able to adapt in a timely manner. The customer
also wanted to incorporate some additional features.
Chassis Plans was able to create full documentation
in 2 weeks and provide prototype system 2 weeks after
that.
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With the US not having a President for several weeks
due to hanging chad, the Government has provided funds
to modernize the voting process. The Government's goal
is computerized voting for all elections. In conjunction
with several partners, Chassis Plans developed a small,
light weight system to control the LCD panel, touch
screen, printer, and provide network and WIFI interface.
This compact computer was 1/4 the weight and 1/3 the
size of the competition
Included inside the 6"x4-3/4"x2.5" chassis
is an 800MHz Via board, 2-1/2" hard drive, PCMCIA
WIFI controller and flash drive. Total system weight
is 1-1/2lbs.
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This embedded 1U network appliance was developed to
maintain the continuous flow of legitimate customer
traffic during a Denial of Service attack as well as
minimize the time network engineers spent on labor-intensive
manual investigations. The customer was unable to find
an off the shelf product that offered the required appearance
and features. The design incorporated high airflow to
cool the motherboard as well as a front panel LCD display
for system status. |
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Network Perimeter Policing is the comprehensive real-time
monitoring and interpretation of important system events
throughout a customer's network, including unauthorized
behavior, malicious hacks and denials of service (DoS),
anomalies and trend analysis. The customer required
a simple 1U chassis, no external drives, and a defined
front panel connector scheme. Chassis Plans was able
to quickly develop a chassis which exceeded all the
customer expectations.
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The customer had been purchasing another chassis which
went end-of-life. The application is for complex operator
simulators for the military, bus drivers, police drivers,
etc. The chassis had to look good, provide limited access
to the drives and controls, and adequately cool the
image generator boards and motherboard.
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Appro stopped selling their 4U 4402 and 4408 chassis
leaving many customer scrambling for solutions. Chassis
Plans provides identical chassis by reverse engineering
the original Appro products. The result is customers
previously purchasing the Appro 4402 and 4408 chassis
now have a reliable source for continued production.
The FAAC Simulation Image Generator profiled above was
a modified Appro 4402 chassis.
Please note these chassis are available for general
purchase from Chassis Plans. |
Appro 4402
Replacement
Appro 4408 Replacement
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A relatively simple custom chassis. Standard 4U design
with three horizontal 5-1/4" drives. The client
wanted additional cooling for the hard drives in addition
to their own look. The end product was powder coated
over the entire exterior and had a complex logo silk
screened to the door. |
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The customer needed a high performance motherboard with
sufficient cooling for the dual processors. The three
plug-in PCI cards were accommodated using a riser card
which provided the proper PCI interrupt parsing. In
addition, the chassis had no front accessible drives
and dual SCSI hard drives in a mirror arrangement. Of
course, custom paint and logo were provided. |
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The client required a minimal depth 4U chassis with
good cooling, filtered air, and no locks. Having control
over the manufacturing and having a domestic source
were important. The resultant design was constructed
of 16 gage CRS, was only 16.5" deep, and is fully
revision controlled for consistency. The chassis is
gold zinc while the front panel is painted. The lid
is secured by only two screws for quick removal. |
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The customer manufactured a film editing head. The
target market was film dailys where the day's filming
was proofed. A highly custom retro look was required
as well as a proprietary rear panel for the many required
connectors and cables. The resulting design is very
attractive, provides a small color LCD display, is
well cooled and provides ample fixed and removable
data storage. Many custom non-PC boards are mounted
inside the enclosure.
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The primary requirement was for a non-Taiwanese appearance.
While the Taiwanese manufacture many fine chassis, it
becomes hard to differentiate your product because they
all look the same. This customer wanted a highly unique
"made in the USA" appearance. Chassis Plans
was able to modify a standard product line to provide
this customer with a chassis look not found elsewhere. |
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This was a tough custom design. The initial requirement
was to fit a chassis to a 21" telco rack, but have
the design be able to also fit a 19" rack. The
motherboard was a massive EATX dual Xeon server class
board. Because this was a NEBS certified central office
application, the system, including the massive processors,
had to be ruggedly constructed to satisfy the seismic
requirements of NEBS. Five external NIC connectors had
to be available at the front panel.
The resulting design met all the customer requirements.
It is NEBS compliant in all regards, fits both 19 and
21 inch racks, and is rugged enough to pass all seismic
and transportation spectra when fully populated. Many
application specific features were built into the chassis. |
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The customer was purchasing a chassis from a domestic
supplier. The design was poor, the doors did not open
completely, and the quality was poor. The customer was
also having delivery problems. However, because of customer
commitments, they could not switch to a different chassis.
Chassis Plans provided a chassis that looked the same
but worked. The quality of the metal work was significantly
better, the doors opened all the way, and the chassis
had a much better look and finish. Not rocket science,
but this simple chassis allowed the customer to keep
several major customers. |
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This custom 4U enclosure was created to house two separate
computers with independent single board computers and
custom backplanes. Chassis Plans worked closely with
the customer's engineering staff and other partners
to create an enclosure to withstand high RF frequencies.
The resulting design meets CE for susceptibility in
high RF environments. The independent backplane chassis
can be swapped in case of failure for a very low MTTR.
This is another design which is highly customer specific
that can not be satisfied by any off the shelf solution.
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