Pioneer Passion for Space!

Application report Tesat Spacecom has been putting its trust in Ersa selective soldering The space mission Sentinel 2 – with Tesat equipment on technology for more than 20 years board – transmits data using laser technology. Pioneer passion for space! As one of the market leaders in the field More than 700 successful aerospace proj- of communication engineering payloads ects, many in cooperation with the Ger- for satellites, Tesat-Spacecom can look man Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zen- back on 50 years of experience in aviation trum für Luft- und Raumfahrt DRL), have and aerospace. Around 1,100 employees been completed by Tesat Spacecom. The develop, manufacture, integrate and test Swabian company has been relying on se- systems and devices for telecommunica- lective soldering technology from system tion via satellite on the 60,000 m² site in supplier Ersa since 1998 – and have flown Backnang, Swabia. well with it. Author Meinrad Eckert Area Sales Manager Ersa GmbH published in productronic 09/2019 in Germany Ersa informs 2/4 Friendly takeover: Ersa ECOSELECT 2 replaces the VERSAFLOW 40/50 (in the background). More than 700 aerospace projects, over national Space Station ISS orbits the 2,500 devices in orbit, in total more than earth at a height of around 400 km), it Facts 350 million operating hours in space – will be around one hundred years before the balance at Tesat Spacecom GmbH the service life of the satellite is spent Tesat-Spacecom & Co. KG, which last year returned rev- and it falls back to earth, in geostation- enue figures of 300 million euros and is ary orbit (height of 36,000 km) this is Revenue: celebrating “70 years at the Backnang extended to several million years! 300 million euros site” in 2019, is extremely impressive. Alongside complete systems, the Tesat Employees: product range includes highly reliable ABSOLUTE ZERO DEFECT RATE 1,100 devices such as travelling wave tube amplifiers, multiplexers, switches and Understandably, the requirements made Space projects: modulators which are delivered to all on aerospace technology have always more than 700 leading satellite manufacturers around been extremely demanding – on ac- the globe. More than half of all telecom- count of radiation every single satellite Devices in orbit: munication satellites in orbit have Tesat component has to hold its ground for 2,500 devices on board. The Swabian space years under tough conditions in space. pioneers were also involved on 21st As a result, all the components undergo Operating hours in February 2008, when aerospace history very extensive testing on the ground, space: was written with the set-up of a laser where failures will lead to costs of a few over 350 million link between two satellites in low earth hundred or 1,000 euros – but are com- orbit (LEO): the German radar satellite paratively easy to eliminate. This is dif- www.tesat.de TerraSAR-X and the US-American de- ferent in space, where problems directly fence satellite NFIRE, both equipped lead to immense cost explosions. With with laser communication terminals comparatively few possibilities of influ- (LCT) from Tesat-Spacecom, set up the encing anything. For this reason, an ab- first orbital laser link in history that day. solute zero defect rate applies to Tesat The jubilee terminal and success sto- production including electronics manu- ry “LCT135” can send data at a speed facturing. This means right down to the of up to 1.8 Gigabit per second – over tiniest of switches and connectors, and distances of up to 80,000 kilometres! applies to each individual PCB as well of Fast, safe and perfectly noise-immune. course. Even the tiniest of production Even if both satellites are moving away faults can have fatal consequences and from each other on different orbits at has to be avoided at all costs. absolute orbit speeds of around 30,000 kilometres per hour. When a satellite is being prepared for launch into space, every single little de- tail has to be just perfect. Because once the satellite is in space, direct access is The Tesat Spacecom plant in no longer possible – when in position at the heart of Backnang. over 900 km above the earth (the Inter- Ersa informs 3/4 Setting for trouble-free production. Tesat Spacecom’s vision is to be con- And he goes on: “In addition, an infra- stantly exploring new paths, boldly and red camera was installed in our first se- with a passion, looking for pioneering lective soldering system, which already solutions that go beyond current stan- registered the energy flows during sol- dards – not only in terms of the final dering and established the thermal load products but including development and on the components – including appro- production too. Thus Tesat Spacecom priate documentation, quite literally a examines various production areas at real highlight.” Even if this option made regular intervals to see whether auto- up one third of the actual machine mation can be advanced in any way. In price, it was absolutely vital in order to the 1990s they recognised early that it prevent components intended for orbit would be necessary to get as far away becoming damaged during automatic as possible from manufactory produc- soldering. “This initial worry was un- tion methods in soldering in particular. founded, however. In the meantime, our The processes that were under consid- technicians for electronics manufactur- eration had to be made more indepen- ing have the necessary experience and dent and optimised – in terms of qual- can say on the basis of microsections ity and speed as well as costs. “In 1998 that the automated soldering spots are Tesat Spacecom decided in favour of a just as good or even better, and also The weight, power and VERSAFLOW 40/50 selective soldering have a lower thermal load,” says Helga small size of the CubeLCT makes new big data appli- system – this system, that Ersa had Eich-Beetz, Team Leader Infrastructure cations possible for Cube- launched on the market only two years at Tesat Spacecom. The documentation Sats: With a size of only 0.3 previously, was relatively unknown in the is important and necessary since it en- U (approx. 10 x 10 x 3 cm) and a mass of about 350 g branch, but had those responsible at ables traceability down to the individual it is able to set up a direct Tesat Spacecom completely convinced,” assembly. Otherwise things could get connection to a downlink says Meinrad Eckert, who has been Area difficult, because Tesat provides a 15- station over a distance of up to 1,500 km – at data Sales Manager for Ersa for 35 years. year guarantee for its components and rates of up to Mbit/s. assemblies, which means all manufacturing protocols have to be stored for this long period. CHANGE ON THE FLY FOR ERSA ECOSELECT 2 Following 20 years of trouble-free operation, the life cycle for the VERSAFLOW 40/50 at Tesat Spacecom came to an end as 2018 drew to a close. There were no plans to return to manual soldering, however, which would not have been permissible unless the company had been prepared to risk its aerospace approval status. Rather, a change on the fly took place at the Backnang site at Ersa informs 4/4 20 years of trouble-free production: Ersa VERSAFLOW 40/50 in the electronics manufacturing line at Tesat-Spacecom. the turn of the year 2018/19, with the high as for their larger counterparts, production line converting to another including those related to the new mo- selective soldering system from Ersa: bile telecommunications standard 5G. a compact ECOSELECT 2 which makes maximum positioning and process reli- ability possible in the same way as its CONVERSION TO LEAD-FREE predecessor. The system had already SOLDERING TECHNOLOGY PLANNED been purchased in 2013, but it was in operation for a business partner who At the moment, Tesat Spacecom elec- was manufacturing for Tesat Space- tronics manufacturing still relies on com. Since the beginning of 2019, the leaded technology. Initial trials are un- compact selective machine has been der way, however, to convert to lead- manufacturing at the Swabian site, with free. These are taking place in parallel qualification and approval for soldering to ongoing production, because selec- being granted within a few weeks in the tive manufacturing in Backnang is a fourth quarter of 2018 so that there single-source solution. Tests in the real was no production downtime at all. environment of the Ersa demonstration and application centre in Wertheim am The trend is moving towards smaller Main are planned for 2019, so that a satellites in space, particularly at the second line will be available sooner or comparatively low height of the earth later. Whereas in the past production of orbit. It goes without saying that space a single satellite could take up to a year, pioneer Tesat Spacecom is setting new Tesat Spacecom is already planning for ! trends in this field, too: Building on one satellite per day. “We are of course Ersa GmbH more than 30 years of experience in the delighted that our VERSAFLOW 40/50 Leonhard-Karl-Str. 24 continual development of laser commu- worked so reliably for 20 years – had 97877 Wertheim nication technology, the Tesat experts the control failed, we would hardly have Phone: +49 9342 800-0 have developed new solutions for com- been able to provide an adequate sub- [email protected] munications in space – smaller, smart- stitute within one day. This is no prob- www.ersa.com er, more versatile for numerous new ap- lem in the case of ECOSELECT 2, since Ersa North America plication areas.

Load more