Why Sypris Gained Extensive Experience Supporting Customers with Complex Power Supplies

Sypris is a value-added design and manufacturing leader in the electronics industry and has provided engineering and production solutions for complex high-density, high-output power supplies since the 1960s. The nature of our customers’ products and their high-reliability mission applications requires the proper management of power under extreme functional and environmental applications.

Overcoming Unique Power Supply Challenges

High-reliability product applications create unique power supply challenges. Advancements in technology continue to heighten demand for more processing power. As the power density of embedded processor designs increases, system architects are looking toward power supplies that can operate under stringent conditions while optimized for size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints.

Providers of power supplies are facing demanding design challenges when it comes to mission-critical applications. They must decrease the product size while increasing performance, and they must make the product light enough for the application while avoiding overheating.

Airborne platforms are among those facing the most difficulty adhering to SWaP restraints. Airborne systems extend beyond fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These products need to perform in difficult environments and must provide the highest power density in the smallest possible package.

Military power supply designers also focus on innovative thermal management as a prominent requirement for their products. Shipboard systems tend to have unique cooling requirements, as they are typically custom designs, physically large, handle high voltage and current outputs. Liquid cooling techniques and advanced edge-cooled conduction backplanes are common in maritime solutions.

Military-grade power supplies are guided by military specifications: MIL-STD-704 (aircraft), MIL-STD-1275 (ground), MIL-STD-1399 (shipboard), MIL-STD-810 (environmental test methods), and MIL-STD-461 (EMI). These standards cover topics such as voltage, maximum current, frequency, electrical noise, and abnormal conditions for both AC and DC systems.

Conversion and regulation from 28 volts, 48 volts, 270 volts, 800 volts and higher is needed to meet the needs of military systems. From a single input voltage, multiple system housekeeping and specialty power rails are developed. Current outputs can reach 200 amps or higher as a function of the input power and application of the system.

Due to mission specific requirements, power supplies used aboard military aircraft, armored vehicles, and naval vessels endure extreme and extensive use. They must perform at a high level without failure.

While a significant share of our power supply business is in the military market, we have leveraged our knowledge, processes, and practices to support power supply products in adjacent high-reliability markets including subsea communication and medical devices.

Time-Tested Experience

During our 60 years of business in the high-reliability market, Sypris has collaborated with customers to provide development, production and sustainment solutions for a wide variety of power supply applications.  Our solutions include the development and implementation of required functional test stations and environmental test programs. This broad range of power supply capability gives Sypris a unique advantage that comes from extensive experience in the manufacturing and testing of high voltage, high power specialized power supplies.

In addition to the wide scope of our power supply capabilities, the diversity of our power supply experience has afforded Sypris a superior level of expertise in the manufacturing of heavy copper printed wiring boards, large custom components, polymeric compounds used to ruggedize custom parts, and the overall sourcing of custom components used in the designs. From a technical perspective, our organic test designs for functional and environmental test requirements have evolved to a platform-based power supply test solution. Our core power supply test platforms can be readily adapted to save development time and budget for our prospective customers.

Fortune 500 Customers Rely on Sypris for Their Power Supply Needs

Sypris has extensive assembly and test experience over a broad range of power supplies used in a variety of demanding applications.

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, DRS, BAE, L3Harris, and others have all chosen Sypris Electronics to assemble and test their power supply products. All of these power supply applications are mission-critical and include the following applications:

• Missile/weapon systems
• Missile warning and countermeasure systems (fixed wing, rotary)
• Maritime electronic warfare
• Radar
• Subsea communications repeater
• Medical devices

Leveraging our experience is a characteristic of the manufacturing and value-added engineering services Sypris provides to its customers.