Rockwell Collins mechanical filters

Rockwell Collins mechanical filters, more than any other electronic component, have helped make Rockwell Collins the world leader in HF radio for ground, airline, maritime and space communication, for more than 50 years.

The markets that Rockwell Collins traditionally targeted have changed considerably in the last 40 years. The company used to only address the high-end radio market that was dominated by the military, space, airline and commercial maritime industry. Since 1991, we have worked hard to lower our costs and address the lower-priced filter market. Our success in this area is due to our ability to mass-produce newer torsional mechanical filters in our facility in Mexicali, Mexico.

Custom designs

Since 1952, Rockwell Collins has specialized in designing mechanical filters to meet special requirements that our OEM customers have. Over the past half century, we have designed and manufactured thousands of different filters for our customers. During much of this time we offered several filters as "low-cost, product-line" filters in order to supply filters at lower prices.

Rockwell Collins continues this tradition today; however, the demand still remains for filters with characteristics that will not allow any compromise. Thus, Rockwell Collins continues to design and build custom filters for many of our customers. The price of these OEM filters can be equal to or even less than that of our "low-cost, product-line" filters, depending on the quantity ordered.

If you don't find a filter in the Rockwell Collins listings that meets your requirements, please provide us with the information requested in the "Custom Designs" section and we will be more than happy to assist you. We may have already designed your filter and it simply is not yet in our listings.

Facilities and locations

Rockwell Collins Filter Products is headquartered in our new Tustin, Calif., facility. We have complete manufacturing, engineering and sales/marketing capabilities. At this facility, Rockwell Collins performs all filter resonator fabrication and tuning, as well as building short-run and hard-to-build filters. We also continue to build the older, original, disc-wire mechanical filters here. All of our filters are shipped from this facility.

Rockwell Collins' second location is in Mexicali, Mexico, at a modern, high-tech facility. At this location, Rockwell Collins can assemble all torsional and low frequency mechanical filters, as well as performing sub-assembly work on all types of our mechanical filters. The majority of our filter assembly work is now done at this facility.

History

Rockwell Collins mechanical filters were first put on the market for sale in 1951. Equipment designers had a vastly different attitude back then, compared with the designers of today. In 1951, they were only willing to use products that had "proven" performance and years of backup field data. Despite this, Art Collins saw the great potential of using mechanical filters in single-sideband (SSB) radios and made it happen. The announcement of the Pioneer Award, given to Art Collins in 1982, reads in part: "He had long envisioned new potential for HF, and he opened up that potential by directing the development of single-sideband mechanical filters, which made the application of sideband radio practical. His name became so associated with SSB that one writer, in later years, quipped: 'Despite opinion to the contrary Art Collins did NOT invent SSB transmission. What Art did do was to develop mechanical filter technology and make SSB practical and attainable'."

Introduced in 1953, the Collins 51-J was the first commercial radio receiver sold that used mechanical filters. Many of these receivers are still in use throughout the world, in part, due to the high reliability and good performance of the mechanical filters. Periodically, replacement filters are built for these receivers, but most of the old filters have yet to be replaced.

The first commercial transceiver (radio transmitter and receiver) to use mechanical filters was the Collins 618-S in 1954. A military version of that radio, ARC-38, shortly followed. The highest volume application of mechanical filters in those days was in the R-390. Each radio used four mechanical filters. Originally designed at Rockwell Collins in 1955, the R-390 was later built by many different companies, mostly as the R-390A. The total production volume of R-390As was more than 65,000 radios.

In 1957, Rockwell Collins developed the world's first mechanical frequency division multiplex (FDM) telephone filters. Then in 1971, Newport Beach engineers designed both the filters and the complete MX-108 telephone system. This was the most successful FDM telephone system built by Rockwell Collins. Most of this equipment was sold to MCI, Saudi Arabia and Korea. In one particular year, Rockwell Collins built 120,000 MX-108 channel and signaling filters in addition to the other filter business.

Rockwell Collins also designs and manufactures mechanical filters for train control. The first train-control filters were used on BART trains and since then have been used on rail systems in Washington, D.C., São Paulo, London and numerous other places throughout the world. Similar to the train-control filters, the Rockwell Collins mechanical filters are used in Omega navigation receivers. When the Voyager aircraft went nonstop, nonrefueled around the world, it had on-board both Omega filters for navigation, and HF-radio filters for communication.