Quick and easy prototyping of heater/sensor systems is often a challenge. Enter Minco’s CT425 controller. The CT425 consists of epoxy-sealed electronics in a non-conductive plastic casing, with a pair of terminal blocks, a USB-B port, a pair of status LEDs, as well as two relays and a logic output.
Earlier this year, Minco was approached by Edina High School students looking for help with a project. The students were participating in their school’s Project Lead the Way (PLTW) engineering program, a series of semester-long classes that introduce students to engineering principles and expose them to different areas of engineering.
Heating can be critical in many processes, but when it’s not properly controlled the results can range from inconvenient to catastrophic. Things catch fire, plane wings ice up, and biological tests give wrong results. That’s why heating applications need controllers.
Problem: A major telecom customer needed to thermally stabilize a battery pack used in a high-altitude application. The pack was part of a payload kept in the stratosphere for weeks or even months at a time. The battery pack wouldn’t operate below freezing, and a heater was needed to maintain the pack at its optimal temperature range.
In most heating applications, the heating itself would be pointless without some kind of control. Typically, that process entails a controller and a sensor connected to the heater to create a feedback loop.
Preventing excessive ice build-up on aircraft wings in flight is critical. Traditionally, heat for this has been scavenged from the plane’s engines and distributed with pneumatic conduit, but the push for lighter aircraft to improve fuel efficiency has raised interest in electrically generated heat as a lighter-weight alternative.
For more than 60 years, Minco has designed and manufactured heating, flex circuit, temperature sensing and instrumentation solutions for some of the world’s most demanding applications.
Thermal performance for standard and custom use cases — from environment stabilization to faster thermal cycling.
Accurately sense and measure temperature, humidity and fluid levels across a wide range of applications.
Achieve new design freedom with flex circuit solutions that improve reliability in a condensed package size.
System-matched controllers complement Minco sensors and heaters to deliver improved system accuracy.
