FLIR Ball

Description

Application for sensing effectiveness of fire retardant bombers in forest fire environment.

The challenge was to mount an infrared detector in an aircraft hull. An additional challenge was to make it retractable, 12 volt powered, mounted upon vibration isolators, fit a small confined space, allow FLIR ball to attach to the actuator, and deliver in a short time period.

Standard actuators, while having the needed stroke length, could not match the FLIR ball mounting configuration. Three adapters were engineered to allow full stroke to be utilized and to mount to the aircraft bulkhead while also allowing the customer to apply different configurations of vibration isolators.

By utilizing a standard, high strength, low profile actuator and adding custom adapters and a non standard 12 VDC motor, all customer requirements were met.