One of Frontier's major differentiators from our competitors is our strong in-house engineering capability. Of the company's 140 personnel, approximately 60 are engineers, technicians, and design professionals. They perform electronic, electrical, mechanical, firmware, and software support for board, box, and system level designs. FES staff includes electrical engineers, mechanical design and simulation personnel, software developers, technicians, and specialty engineers (e.g., reliability, maintainability, safety analyses). FES equipment is designed for high-reliability military/aerospace applications that must withstand vibration, shock, thermal, and other environmental extremes. Specialty fields include high-speed digital and analog circuitry; display design and control; power control, regulation and switching; Gigabit fiber and Ethernet designs; JTAG boundary scan and control; and FPGA development and simulation.
Design tools include SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD software for mechanical design and Altium PCB design software for electrical circuit performance modeling, schematic capture and printed circuit board layout, routing, and rules checking. Also, FES has engineering tools for modeling thermal and structural environments and performing reliability predictions. FES has engineering labs, a model shop for machining, and 3-D printing of prototype pieces, assembly jigs, and production fixtures.
FES has over 30 years of experience in qualification and acceptance test experience for aircraft, manned spacecraft, satellite, and shipboard systems IAW MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, DO-160 and other standards. Functional/electrical, temperature, vibration, thermal vibe, thermal vac, informal EMI/EMC compliance and some shock are performed in-house. For space programs, FES conducts destructive physical analysis/up-screening of electronic components as necessary. FES uses qualified test houses for formal MIL-STD-461 EMI/EMC testing and specialty tests (e.g., salt fog, pyroshock, explosive atmosphere, etc.)