Thermal Strap Solutions - TAI 

Aerospace | Laboratory | Commercial 

Technology Applications, Inc. (TAI), headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, is the world's premier provider of thermal straps (often referred to as "flexible thermal links," "heat straps," "thermal shunts," or "thermal cables"). We offer the most comprehensive array of custom and standard model strap products in the industry, in addition to our strap testing services. Each year, we provide thousands of copper straps, and dozens to hundreds of graphite & carbon straps to customers from NASA, to JAXA, ESA, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Ball, and countless commercial electronics companies, national labs, and universities across the globe.

Our strap products have flight heritage, and our team of experts have years of strap design, fabrication, and qualification experience, and extensive experience with spaceflight programs (and the associated qualification and reporting requirements). All of our strap products are designed and assembled, go through extensive quality inspections, finishing, and cleaning processes, right here at our facility, by our experts.

TAI's Thermal Link / Strap Products

Graphite Fiber Thermal Straps (GFTS®)

Graphite Thermal Links / Straps

TAI's GFTS® products are the space industry's standard for lightweight, high conductance, flexible carbon thermal straps, and GFTS® assemblies alone have the Spaceflight Heritage required by NASA, JAXA, and ESA. Unlike graphene composite thermal links or pyrolytic graphite sheet (PGS) straps, GFTS® assemblies offer flexibility on all three axes, have been extensively space qualified, and are not catastrophically damaged by simple mishandling, installation, or the typical vibration and shock profiles associated with qualification and launch. The average GFTS® assembly is a mere 1/5 - 1/10 the mass of equivalent metallic thermal links/straps, and they are ideal for thermally conductive vibration isolation. Typical GFTS® programs and FM units are now comparably priced with metallic foil straps, and more affordable than any competing carbon or graphite strap commercially available.

Not only has our GFTS® technology been space qualified by NASA, JAXA and several US and European Aerospace organizations, but our straps have flown on the ORION & ASTRO-H programs (in addition to several others), and have been subjected to--and successfully passed--some of the most extensive and grueling spaceflight qualification ever applied to thermal straps. We are also proud to report our GFTS® assemblies are currently being used in NASA's SPICE program, GRACE-FO, GPS III, EnMAP, Boeing's CST-100, and numerous US and European commercial and research satellites set to launch in 2017.

To see examples of previous prototype & FM graphite straps, visit our Graphite Thermal Strap Gallery page.

 

Copper Thermal Straps (CuTS®)

Copper Thermal Links Straps

TAI provides custom and standard configuration OFHC copper (99.99 - 99.998% pure / C101) cabling / rope straps (CuTS®). All standard and custom straps are now offered with our proprietary, TAI OFHC UltraFlex™ copper cabling (offering vastly improved flexibility, while maintaining the same diameter and thermal performance as our standard OFHC cu braid). CuTS® are the most affordable straps commercially-available, at just 1/2 - 1/4 the price of stacked metallic foil straps, and 1/4 - 1/10 the cost of any graphite or graphene strap. While they are most often used in ground-based applications, our CuTS® are used in a number of US and European space programs including: GOES-R/S/T/U, DSAC, OSIRIS-REx, GRACE-FO, Solar Orbiter, METEOSAT and others (to learn more about CuTS® flight heritage and current space programs, visit our CuTS page).
 
For examples of standard & custom copper straps from dozens of programs, visit our Copper Thermal Strap Gallery.