Today I built a miniature thermal enclosure in order to test the temperature controller box. I found a small aluminum box and surrounded it with scrap pieces of foam.
I soldered extension wires to the leads of the thermistor and the heater, and to these extension wires I soldered small pieces of resistor wire that fit into the main output connection on the back of the controller. The heater was then adhered to the inside of the aluminum box (via its own sticker-back), and the thermistor was attached near the heater via masking tape.
I set the target temperaure to 35oC, and adjusted all the necessary parameters on the controller. The initial test was the heater inside the box, with foam only beneath the bottom of the box. In this setup, it took about about 25 minutes to equilibrate. The next test was with the box completely enclosed with foam, and held up from the desk by a glass dish. This equilibrated more quickly, reaching the specified temperature after about 15 minutes.
After the warm-up time, the temperature of the box tends to overshoots the set 35oC target, before settling down to the target temperature. I'm working on using the USB interface of the controller so that I'll be able to have plots of the temperature of the enclosure as a function of time.
Attachment 1: The cable I made, with the connections to the controller at one end, and the heater and thermistor at the other end.
Attachment 2: The first test of the control system.
Attachment 3: How the heater and the thermistor are fastened to the inside of the box.
Attachment 4: The second, more quickly equilibrating test where the aluminum box is surrounded by foam. |