I've have been talking a little bit with Steve about the seismometer enclosures.
We want to improve on the current stainless steel cans that cover the two Guralps at the end of the arms. In order to do this, we want to cover the interior of the cans with copper foil to improve the thermal conductivity of the enclosure to better control the temperature inside it. Ideally, we would want to copper plate the cans, but cost and difficulty has been an issue.
I have done some rough calculations and it seems that we need a copper layer of thickness being about a third that of the stainless steel can. This happens to be around 0.5-0.6 mm since we have 16 gauge (~1.6 mm) stainless steel cans.
After wrapping the cans interior with copper, we will insulate them with foam in order to improve its thermal inertia. We want to probably use the same foam that Megan has been using for her seismometer enclosure. I have yet to think about a heater, but something similar to Megans resistor thing would work only smaller. I would be placed inside the can, right on the center of its bottom in order to ditribute heat evenly.
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