Watlow® Silicone Rubber Heaters for flexible applications

Watlow®’s broad range of exceptional electric thermal solutions includes ultra-flexible silicone rubber heaters that can apply heat precisely where required.

This high specificity and flexibility, together with use of advanced materials and thermal design, combine to improve heat transfer, speed warm ups, and decrease overall wattage requirements.

Silicone Rubber Heater features

Watlow® silicone rubber heaters are rugged, yet thin, lightweight and flexible, with a multitude of applications, including medical and diagnostic equipment such as blood analyzers and test tube heaters.

The heaters are constructed with wire-wound or etched-foil elements that are only 1.4mm or 0.56 mm thick respectively. This thin form has two major advantages. In the first place, this construction creates a very slim and flexible heater allowing it to fit in situations where space is limited. Secondly, it means that very little material separates the internal heating element from the part to be heated, making heat transfer rapid and efficient.

Specifications

Fiberglass-reinforced silicone rubber construction provides Watlow® silicone rubber heaters with dimensional stability without sacrificing flexibility. To further increase the heating efficiency, silicone rubber heaters can be thermally insulated with silicone sponge rubber in thicknesses from 1.6 to 13 mm bonded to one side of the heater. They can also be supplied with an aluminized low loss treatment surface added to the back of the heater to reduce radiated heat losses.

These heaters can operate in temperatures up to 260^oC (500^oF), with maximum watt densities that can reach 12.5 W per square cm or 80 W per square inch.

Watlow® offers many types of PTFE or UL silicone insulated plated copper UL® 1180 CSA wire leads that can project from any position along the perimeter or center of the heater unit that can be supplied to almost any length and termination.

Watlow® offers silicone heaters in more than 80 designs from stock and can also provide rubber heaters factory formed to many three-dimensional shapes, such as cylinders, cones and boxes, and with special holes, cutouts and notches as required for specific designs.

Resources

Click on Watlow® silicone rubber heaters to download specification sheet.
Click on Flexible Heaters to download brochure.
Click on Watlow® Visual Designer™ to explore solutions.