Which furnace to purchase:

[Tuesday]

I am developing an undergraduate lab and we want to use LabView to control high temperature box furnaces.  Would anyone have advice as to which ones would best work?  We have PCI-6000 series cards and BNC 2120 boxes. We have a few with Eurotherm controllers, but they don't have serial ports. 

Thank you

[Conseils]

Just a tip....

You can retro fit serial ports to many of the Eurotherm controllers. You could contact your local Eurotherm office for help.

[johnsold]

Another tip...

Make sure there is an independent safety thermostat. Never count on LV running on a desktop OS to provide the only safety control, especially on a student lab.

Lynn

[David S.]

You've definitely got a point there, Lynn.  Tuesday, I know you probably prefer to work with your existing hardware, but you might want to check out our R-Series DAQ cards.  You download LVFPGA or LVRT code to them, and they keep running if somehow disconnected from the host program.  This lets you account for several bad situations where the host connection could be lost.

[napview]

I would recommend TestEQuity thermo chamber (in 3 sizes). It comes with serial port but there is a GPIB to serial control box (might be an option) if you want GPIB control. There is already a driver for it in Labview.

[Tuesday]

Thank you all for the advice.  I looked at the Test EQuity chambers, which would be great except I need to be able to go up to 1100C.  Any other suggestions?

[johnsold]

We have some furnaces which go to 1100 C. How large does the chamber need to be? The furnaces are not in my lab, but I can find out what brand we have. I know these are not happy running for extended time at the maximum temperature, so read the ratings carefully. The insulation cracked and shrivelled up, allowing the outer case to get too hot.

Lynn

[Tuesday]

Hi Lynn,

We usually stay at temperature for a day or so, they are used for undergraduate labs in materials science.  The chamber should be large enough for a 100mL crucible.