Project - Board Mounts.

Board Mounts

The purpose of this system is to safely house all boards used within the Fill Station. This includes relay boards, ball valve board, a power board, Sense Boards, and a PI Hat.

The first design choice was whether or not to design a PCB Rack, or slotting system, similar to the system used in the avionics bay, or to instead transition to a surface mounting approach. The Rack approach was useful due to its compact storage capability. The large size of the SKB Box (26.5" x 26.56" x 11.65") used as the base for the fill station made compactness a less important factor in the design space. Many boards had D-Sub Connectors that would not be accessible if not mounted with the topside of the board exposed. For these reasons, surface mounting was selected.

Initially, the method of mounting the boards was through bolts and washers. How- ever, drilling holes into the box increased the risk that particles from the environment could reach the interior of the box. The final mount features tabs that would allow for very high bond (VHB) mounting tape to be used