This invention relates generally to electronic enclosures and, in particular, to tamper-proof enclosure constructed by consolidating material increments using a process that produces an atomically clean faying surface between the increments without melting the material in bulk.
Increasingly, electronic and other devices embody sensitive military, strategic, or commercial information within their designs, firmware, middleware, and data. Tampering with such devices for the purposes of information theft is an increasing threat to both corporate and national entities. New methods to protect such sensitive devices from destructive, nondestructive, contact, and non-contact tampering techniques are required.
A range of techniques can be used to obtain sensitive design information and data from electronic devices. These include destruction of an enclosure so that data can be copied from storage devices, use of radiography or field ion beam inspection to obtain hardware designs without physical intrusion and other approaches.
Commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/532,432 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,500 and Ser. No. 10/088,040 now U.S. Pat. No. 6,814,823, the entire content of each being incorporated herein by reference, disclose systems and methods for fabricating objects by consolidating material increments in accordance with a description of the object using a process that produces an atomically clean faying surface between the increments without melting the material in bulk. Ultrasonic, electrical resistance, and frictional methodologies, and combinations thereof, may be used for such consolidation.
According to these previous disclosures, the material increments are placed in position to shape the object by a material feeding unit. The raw material may be provided in various forms, including flat sheets, segments of tape, strands of filament or single dots cut from a wire roll. The material may be metallic or plastic, and its composition may vary discontinuously or gradually from one layer to the next, creating a region of functionally gradient material. Plastic or metal matrix composite material feedstocks incorporating reinforcement materials of various compositions and geometries may also be used.
If excess material is applied due to the feedstock geometry employed, such material may be removed after each layer is bonded, or at the end of the process; that is, after sufficient material has been consolidated to realize the final object. A variety of tools may be used for material removal, depending on composition and the target application, including knives, drilling or milling machines, laser cutting beams, grinding, EDM, chemical etch, or ultrasonic cutting tools.
The material increments are fed sequentially and additively according to a computer-model description of the object, which is generated by a computer-aided design (CAD) system, preferably on a layer-by-layer basis. The CAD system, which holds the description of the object, interfaces with a numerical controller, which in turn controls one or more actuators. The actuators impart motion in multiple directions. Three orthogonal directions may be used or five axes, including pitch and yaw as well as XYZ, may be appropriate for certain applications, so that each increment (i.e., layer) of material is accurately placed in position and clamped under pressure.
During these additive manufacturing or free-form fabrication processes, it is often important to provide a support material to the part being produced. This is most often the case when enclosed volumes, or cantilevered sections are being produced, although other types of features with less aggressive unsupported geometries also require the use of supports. There are two types of support structures in free form fabrication, which can be classified as intrinsic and extrinsic.
Intrinsic support structures are those which are essentially produced as a result of the process itself. A classic example of this situation is that pertaining in selective laser sintering or 3D printing, wherein a powder layer is spread across an entire build volume. An operation is performed on certain regions of the powder (i.e., passing a laser over it to melt the powders, or printing binder over it to cause the particles to adhere to each other), which correspond to the cross section of the layer of the part being built to cause the particles to adhere. The remainder of the unaffected powder remains in place as another layer is spread and the process repeated. This mass of unbound powder serves the function of supporting additional layers of material as they are deposited.
Extrinsic support are those in which a second material is used to support the growing structure (examples include shape deposition modeling and inkjet based systems), or in which special support structures are built using the build material or a second material (examples include fused deposition modeling and stereolithography) which are later cut off. In general, intrinsic supports have advantages over the extrinsic types, as they are simpler to implement, since they do not require the supply of a second material.
This invention resides in anti-tamper enclosures for electronic devices which incorporate a variety of passive and active anti-tampering techniques in a novel way, using highly specialized manufacturing techniques that uniquely and innovatively allow such enclosures to be fabricated.
Different embodiments include, alone or in combination, enclosures that:
Sensors such as accelerometers, thermocouples, radiation sensors, and others can be incorporated in the enclosure, allowing mechanical, thermal, and other events not generally expected to be experienced by the device to be detected. Algorithms may provided to determine, for example, whether an attack on the device by machining of the enclosure has been conducted. Machining creates characteristic chatter on metal surface; this could be enhanced by incorporating a layer of very hard ceramic fibers in the enclosure, and accelerometer or acoustic data may be used to identify such a threat.
With regard to the destruction of device/data, just as an attempt to tamper with a sensitive device can be used to activate a wireless transmitter to alert an owner/attendant, a sensor signal may be used to trigger a device/data destruction technique such as firing of an ultra-capacitor to magnetically or thermally destroy data or a device, release of chemical agent, explosive or other destructive means.
Thus, in all disclosed embodiments, solid-state joining technologies are used to circumvent the technical difficulties associated with conventional high temperature processing techniques such as those noted above. In addition, certain very low heat input fusion techniques, employing highly focused heat sources such as laser or electron beam welding may be useful in these applications as well.
In previous patents and invention disclosures we have described the use of ultrasonic, electrical resistance, and friction welding techniques as a means of producing a range of articles having arbitrary geometry, from featureless feedstocks such as wires, sheets, tapes, dots of metal, etc. The contents of these patents and applications are incorporated herein by reference.
In this anti-tampering application, previously shaped layers may be laminated to produce a solid tamperproof enclosure, and featureless layers which are applied and shaped each layer may also be used. For example, for high-volume applications it may be desirable to have previously stamped layers that are applied sequentially to produce an enclosure, incorporate the integral waveguide/antenna portion of the enclosure, and seal off the device. For low-volume devices, it may be desirable to employ featureless feedstocks which are machine via milling, electrical discharge machining, laser cutting, or other such means as suggest themselves, alternately with solid state lamination in order to produce small volumes at lower unit costs.
This application claims priority from U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/884,506, filed Jan. 11, 2007, the entire content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60884506 | Jan 2007 | US |