Facilities
Culham Science Centre, Abingdon, Oxfordshire. U.K.
The location of ABSL’s U.K. operations is at the Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire. The U.K. facility includes a full suite of space hardware design, build, and test facilities. The Culham facility is the result of more then 40 years of continuous involvement in the space industry. The Culham facility includes the following: (picture is building.jpg)
Production Manufacturing
- 580 square feet of class 100k clean room which has been specifically designed for the manufacture of space hardware. With 630 feet of ESD safe bench space its geared towards single, or small volume production
- 144 square feet of class 100 clean room space built for the assembly of high quality optical products complete with a laminar flow bench and access to a thermal vacuum chamber.
- Full support with both mechanical and electrical areas for assembly of jigs and harnesses required during manufacture and test of all space hardware.
- Large bonded material store for holding space qualified components and materials with identification and barcode traceability for certification.
Testing
- Three thermal vacuum chambers with a temperature range of -80°C to +100°C at vacuums down to 1 x 10-6 torr which are fully programmable for long term temperature cycling of hardware. All chambers come equipped with integrated battery power supplies.
- Thermal chambers for environmental testing of equipment capable of temperature cycling from -40°C to +100°C, fully programmable for long term cycling of hardware
- Maccor and Bitrode computer controlled battery testers for monitoring and electrically cycling batteries up to 110 volts / 120 Amps
- Maccor single cell formation rigs to enable testing of over five-hundred cells at any one time
- Battery impedance characterisation equipment covering a range of 10Hz to 100kHz
Longmont, Colorado, USA
On December 1st 2007 ABSL Space Products signed the lease for its new state of the art space production and test facility in the Longmont, Colorado, fifty miles from Denver international airport. The Colorado facility alleviates the burden of ITAR for the U.S. customers by performing all design, manufacturing, testing, program management, and sales in the U.S.A..
The new 10,256 square foot building houses 7,500 square feet of testing and clean room space, with the remaining space dedicated to engineering design, development, and operational program activities. The facility has been designed to effectively serve the requirements of both governmental and commercial programs while following the paradigms of lean manufacturing and testing.
Production Manufacturing
- 1,200 square feet of class 10k or better clean room for assembly of high reliability space hardware
- 400 square feet of ESD protected workstations and mechanical workbenches
- Dedicated shipping and receiving area for pre-processing materials and parts prior to their admission in the high reliability bonded store.
- The large bonded store features temperature control, ESD treated floor and workstations, and antistatic packaging to treat sensitive components as required.
- To ensure control of stock items, a computerised system is used for storage and retrieval operations.
Testing
- Large suite of space testing capabilities with multiple stations to enable parallel testing and significantly streamline program test schedules. Thermal vacuum testing between temperatures of -150°C and +150°C at vacuum levels exceeding 1 x 10-6 Torr
- Thermal chambers and thermal shock chambers provide capability for long and short life test at temperatures between -70°C and +170°C with a rate of change circa 3°C / minute.
- The environmental testing equipment can be integrated to the battery / electrical testing and simulation equipment to address testing needs ranging from cell assessment and qualification (with voltage upto 5V) to the qualification, acceptance, and life testing of full space battery assemblies (with voltages from 20V to 400V)
