HIGH SPEED CRYSTAL OSCILLATORS

High Speed Crystal Oscillators:

High Speed Crystal Oscillators

The customer makes high performance crystal oscillators and atomic clocks for satellites and laboratories and they needed something for temperature control and stabilization.

They found TECA and the AHP-301CPV, tried one and say it is “working fantastic”. Well enough to order more for production, quality and engineering tests. They use them to maintain a stable temperature of the oscillator which in turn provides a stable frequency.

COOLING MOUNTING WAX

Cooling Mounting Wax:

cooling mounting wax cooling mounting wax

 

A product design engineer at a medical device company needed a way to cool wax blocks holding film. The wax is printed directly onto the customer’s aluminum tray. Before discovering TECA products, the customer was placing the aluminum tray in a refrigerator and mechanically removing the wax by scraping it off with a metal blade.

TECA’s AHP-1200CP Cold Plate is a better solution. The customer is happy to have found an affordable cold plate to dedicate to his cooling task.

Please view the video provided by our customer to see how quickly and easily the wax is now removed (no more scraping!).

CHEMICAL WASTE TRANSPORT

Chemical Waste Transport:

chemical waste transport

Here’s an application that our engineering crew would love to put into greater use if they could figure out where and how. A specialty gas company called. They wanted to transfer toxic and corrosive liquids from big to small containers for lab use. The process had been taking several minutes with too much wasted product.

They knew because of the conditions a natural head pressure in the big container that they could use a cold plate to cool at the receiving vessel (Ø 1.5″ x 12″ bottle) to create a driving force which moves the fluid.

We didn’t go into the physics of this, we trusted what the customer said and worked with them. When they tried an AHP-1200CP it was fantastic. It turned 4 minutes and a lot of waste into no waste and 40 seconds.

PERFORMANCE TESTING

Performance Testing:

performance testing performance testing

 

Customer needed to test low-temperature performance of inertial measuring devices.  In this application of low temperature thermoelectric cooling; the user is testing inertial measurement devices over a temperature range.

The devices as well as the TECA cascaded cooling assembly are subjected to various rotational and acceleration stimuli while device temperature is controlled.  The custom thermoelectric cold plate cascaded (Peltier cascade) was built up from a standard Model AHP-301CP cold plate.

The finished test fixture was able to function with a maximum rotation rate of 1700° per second and 50 g acceleration.  The rotation is evident in the photo. By using a standard product as the basis for the cooling system, higher costs associated with a custom solution were avoided.

VACUUM CHAMBER

Vacuum Chamber:

vacuum chamber

 

Some engineers at Lucent wanted to cool devices inside a vacuum chamber and they didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. TECA’s been making devices like that for decades. They had a load of 10 to 20 watts generated and wanted -40 °C with about 15 °C to 20 °C water available.

A Custom LHP-800CP / LHP-300CP cascade, controller and power supply were supplied for a reasonable cost in a reasonable time frame.

SAMPLE COOLING IN CLEAN ROOM

Sample Cooling (Clean Room):

Sample Cooling Clean Room Sample Cooling Clean Room

 

A research lab in Europe needed to stabilize the temperature of an acid solution within +-0.5 °C. TECA’s AHP-301CPV Cold/Hot Plate was the ideal solution due to its small footprint, versatile features and programmable temperature controller. The customer offered the following comments:

  • The AHP-301CPV is installed in our big clean room*. Here we fabricate our micro/nano devices for electronic and photonic applications.
  • we have now the possibility to do experiments at controlled temperatures and in a really wide range of temperatures. This allow us to increase the reproducibility of our results, which often are so dependent by Temperature.
  • AHP-301CPV keeps stable the temperature of an acid solution inside a beaker (max 6 or 7cm in diameter and max 10cm in height).
  • The possibility to program the temperature controller it’s really interesting, and it will be worthwhile for future experiments. (The customer is referring to the ability to program ramp & soak profiles)

TECA’s cold/hot plates are not specifically designed for clean room use however the customer determined this product would be suitable given the restrictions in this particular clean room.

COOLING SAMPLES TO -40 °C Research Study

Cooling Samples to -40 °C

Cooling Samples to -40 °C Cooling Samples to -40 °C

 

A university research team utilized TECA’s AHP-1200C31 Cascaded Cold Plate to build a calorimeter for a research paper that was recently published. The researchers aimed to determine the thermal properties of their specimen as part of a study on cement and concrete durability.

Originally the customer used only the AHP-1200CAS base cold plate and was able to reach -15 °C. When he determined that colder temperatures were needed, he added the CCP-31 cascade attachment to reach -40 °C. With a cascade system each cascade stage acts as a heat sink for the stage above it. This allows the top stage to reach colder temperatures.

TECA offers two and three stage cascade systems for reaching temperatures as low as -60 °C (LHP-1200C31).

MEDICAL LABORATORY

Medical Laboratory:

medical laboratory

Some researchers at Johns Hopkins have taken the AHP-1200CPV thermoelectric cold plate (Peltier cold plate) and are cooling protein crystallization in Teflon trays with a solution in them. They’ve used the remote sense feature by drilling a hole in Teflon tray and installing the sensor in there. Using it with internal sensor and the auto-tuning feature they have gotten the control they needed. The secret may have been in how well the Teflon tray is contacting the 2″ X 3″ plate, machined perfectly flat.

Cooling objects with concave bottoms minimizes the contact area and diminishes the cooling effectiveness.

MEDICATION STORAGE

Medication Storage:

medication storage medication storage

 

Keeping medication at optimal storage temperature is very important.

A customized AHP-1200CPV thermoelectric cold plate (Peltier cooling plate) with plate that has grooves with various diameters to accommodate vials of different sizes and lengths was a perfect solution for the customer. Another feature of this custom thermoelectric cooling unit (Peltier cold plate) is tamper proof temperature controller.

MASS SPECTROMETER LABORATORY

Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer Laboratory:

MASS SPECTROMETER LABORATORY MASS SPECTROMETER LABORATORY

 

Stock thermostated sample tray supplied with mass spectrometer holds water samples at above ambient temperature. This leads to evaporation and condensation within the sample vials, and problems of gas transfer through sample needle to mass spectrometer (liquid condensation blocks gas flow through capillary tube).

USF Geology Stable Isotope Laboratory installed a second auto-sampler with a TECA AHP-1200CPV cold plate to keep samples at precisely controlled temperatures to prevent condensation and evaporation of the sample within the vials, and maintains the thermal stability required for isotope ratio mass spectrometry of water samples analyzed by equilibration method.

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