PASADENA, CA – The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a call for interest to fabricate and assemble the engineering model of the Avionics Reference Bus Compute Element (RBCE) assemblies based on heritage designs from the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

JPL hopes to determine a potential future partner in developing the JPL Reference Bus Hardware Product Line. JPL is operating under a prime contract with NASA.

The RBCE assembly is composed of nine circuit card assemblies: a power converter unit (CEPCU1), two critical relay controllers (CRCC-1, CRCC-2), one 3u RAD750 V3 single-board spacecraft flight computer (SFC_V3), two serial interface assemblies, one telecom interface, one nonvolatile memory, and one compute element backplane.

JPL will provide the PWB drawings, parts list, Gerber files, and other documentation required to support the assembly build; bare boards, components and connectors; assembly drawings; workmanship requirements; and nominal ground support equipment, including test software and test procedure. It will also provide test engineering support.

The manufacturer will handle the documents and travelers, perform board-level functional test; fixtures and tooling for assembly; and assemble the boards.

JPL said qualified manufacturers must be registered under NAICS Standard Code 334418 and have a minimum business base of 50 full-time employees employed over the past 12 months in labor categories of similar nature to those required by JPL. Manufacturers should have financial resources to handle paying said workers for six months and an operations manager with a bachelor's in engineering or physics with at least 10 years’ experience, among other requirements.

Register now for PCB West, the leading conference and exhibition for printed circuit board design! Coming Sept. 9-12 to the Santa Clara Convention Center. pcbwest.com