Case study June 2026
The Thermal Test Vehicle.
A 20kW multi-channel heater controller for validating liquid-cooled server infrastructure.
The problem
The client needed to validate the thermal performance of their custom liquid cooling system, cold plates and coolant delivery units, for next-generation servers. That meant simulating server heat loads on demand: a controllable thermal test vehicle.
What we built
- Multi-channel modular heater controller PCBs, each channel safely delivering 2kW.
- A wireless HMI running on a tablet, built with a PLC contractor, controlling individual heater zones across multiple rack-mounted servers via PWM.
- Mechanical integration with the custom sheet-metal server chassis, working alongside the client’s mechanical engineers.
- Debugging at power: profiling power lead inductance and mitigating high-voltage transients.
The outcome
The client’s cold plates and CDU infrastructure handled total loads of up to 20kW. The test vehicle proved it with real-world data, which unblocked funding for the group’s next generation of high-density server architectures.