LIBERTY LAKE, Wa., 19 May 2009. SprayCool has launched a 3U form factor of its scalable MPE line of direct-spray rugged enclosures. Targeted for use in ground vehicles, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), and rotor-wing aircraft sensitive to size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP), the MPE-3U is designed to offer low overall system cost compared to conduction or other liquid-cooled alternatives, and to enable electronics flexibility, density, and reliability in a 3U enclosure.

The MPE-3U weighs in at 18 pounds, and is rugged enough to deliver environmental isolation to commercial grade and rugged 3U cards. The MPE-3U enables customers to deploy commercial-grade or legacy electronics in the same enclosure.

The MPE-3U is the product of a new trend by SprayCool to evolve its enclosure family to smaller and lighter footprints, while maintaining product flexibility and reliability at more competitive costs.

"Like all our enclosures, SprayCool's MPE-3U is environmentally isolated to provide electronics survivability in harsh conditions," says Matt Gerber, SprayCool president and chief executive officer. "And, its compact size and versatile mounting compatibility means customers can package significantly more 3U electronics into a smaller, lighter, more power efficient enclosure, and do it much more quickly."

The MPE-3U enclosure can scale above seven slots and is designed to meet industry-standard designs for 3U VPX, cPCI/cPCIe, VME-64X, and proprietary electronics boards. The MPE-3U chassis is compatible with half-ATR mounting standards and can accommodate a variety of customer-specified I/O and backplane options.

The MPE-3U is a smaller variant of SprayCool's MPE-6U enclosure, and supports the same rugged environments for vibration, shock, EMI, sand, dust, salt fog, salt water immersion, altitude, and temperature.

The SprayCool MPE-3U is suited for the challenges facing today's integrators and system designers that need to package more processing power into an existing or smaller space, says a company representative. Like the MPE-6U enclosure, target applications for the MPE-3U include sensor processing, electronic warfare, mission computing, and command and control for unmanned aircraft, helicopters, and ground-based vehicles.