BVM invests in design, integration and manufacturing

6th September 2016

BVM Ltd

Nat Bowers

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Making a substantial investment in both people and equipment, BVM has expanded its design, system integration, manufacture and test facilities following its move to larger premises in 2015. In addition to offering a broad range of standard embedded SBCs, BVM has more than 25 years’ experience of designing, manufacturing and testing embedded computer boards and systems.

Applications are many and varied, ranging from consumer-facing information kiosks, specialist embedded systems, industrial control systems, mobile systems for emergency vehicles and rail-based applications.

Design resources include the latest Solidworks 3D modelling software for system design and advanced Altium PCB layout and design software capable of handling the latest high speed PCIe signals with impedance matched tracks.

Rod Clarke, Managing Director, BV, commented: "A good design not only needs to function well but it must be designed for manufacture if it is to be a successful product."

All design work comes under BVM's ISO-9001 Quality Management System. Key considerations for any project are power and thermal management, manufacturability and testability, production life expectancy and obsolescence planning. Once a design specification has been developed and agreed, a "proof of concept" to verify the software, overall functionality and cost is produced. Once accepted, the project then moves into prototype production before volume manufacturing.

A custom board design can often be a cost-effective approach: BVM has a long tradition of designing and manufacturing boards. Originally using VMEbus, then cPCI and PMC Module designs, today’s custom baseboards using COM such as COM Express, Qseven or ETX. BVM custom boards enable customer specific I/O and display requirements to be implemented on the baseboard, with processing handled by a standard module. This takes advantage of the volume PC chipset requirements and pricing whilst ensuring a custom end product for the application.

Embedded OS porting and deployment is a further strength, with Windows 7, 8 and Windows 10 IOT customisations. Embedded OS gives customers a good foundation for their application software and BVM can assist with software deployment and testing.

Manufacturing capability and test have also been enhanced, with additional equipment and in-house environmental testing facilities installed after the move to the new facility. Full board and system build, configuration, test and burn-in, embedded software deployment and extreme temperature testing are all available, supported with a full after sales service, technical support and obsolescence management.