Programs

NAI products have enjoyed acceptance across a wide range of domestic and international Land, Sea, and Air programs in both Military and Commercial industries.

Outlined below are three programs which highlight the design capabilities of NAI.

Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

Due to tight size constraints, the system designers needed an integrated Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) motor drive control and associated power supply for its FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared Radar), and they needed it fast. NAI's Power Supply and Board Divisions worked together under a very tight design schedule to deliver a power supply and a dual channel VME PWM motor control card. The power supply absorbs peak current, and is interconnected to the motor control board via a serial interface. If there is a malfunction on the motor control board, the power supply is shut down. NAI's engineering team was able to provide a very rapid development, from concept to production in less than 6 months.

M60A3 Main Battle Tank

The M60A3 Integrated Fire Control System (IFCS) provides the tank with the ability to acquire and track both stationary and mobile targets while the tank is on the move. Two of NAI's DC/DC converters (55GS1 and 55KT1) power the IFCS electronics. These rugged conduction cooled designs meet the requirements of MIL-STD-461, 704 and 810. The customer reviewed the complete costs of assembling their own solutions using a module-based approach and decided that our one-box, "mount, connect and go" solutions provided an overall lower-cost solution. In addition, the program utilizes an NAI DC/AC Sine Inverter (44KS1-01) to power a gyro. The customer experienced power fluctuations while using another supplier's product. In less than a month, NAI submitted a design for a form, fit and function replacement solution, and subsequently received the customer's order.

LHD 8 Amphibious Assault Ship

One of the design challenges on this 844 foot ship was managing the signals generated by over 12,000 transducers. Designers of the LHD 8 electronics chose North Atlantic's VME Intelligent Multifunction card (64C1) and serial communications card (64RS2) to integrate A/D conversion, D/A conversion, serial communications, RTD, and 4-20ma signals onto the VME bus. Through the use of the NAI products, designers reduced card count by 50%, cutting costs, system size, weight and power consumption of the system. In addition, the extensive test and diagnostics capabilities of the 64C1 improved system maintainability by providing the ability to trace faults to the card, module, and channel level, and to identify signal interface faults such as open lines and undefined range.