IDCAs are comprised of three major components - the selected FPA, the dewar, and the cooler. Closed cycle (or Hard Vacuum) dewars produced at SBF feature all metal external parts and are built for long life under stressing environmental conditions. SBF offers a number of off-the-shelf solutions, but has also developed these products knowing that typical items, such as the cold filter spectral, transfer tube configuration, and f/#, must be altered to meet specific application requirements.
A 1 watt SADA compliant cooler is mated to a SBF large format dewar to provide cooling for the 24um 640x512 series of FPA in high ambient conditions such as those found in gimbal assemblies. This same configuration can also be used to package SBF's 1Kx1K FPA. A 1.5 watt SADA dewar can also be used since the interface to the dewar is identical to the 1 watt model.
SBF's medium format dewar was designed to house both the 30um 320x256 series of FPAs and the new 20um 640x512 FPAs. A 1/5 watt cooler is shown, but a 1/3 watt cooler can just as easily be integrated into this configuration with little or no increase in cost.
A large format dewar is shown next to a 1 watt cooler. SBF's large format dewars do not use slip-on technology due to the inefficiencies in the heat transfer. Therefore, the cold finger of the cooler would be welded into the dewar as part of the construction process.
