Watlow White Paper highlights implications of advanced ceramic heaters for analytical equipment design

World-leading Industrial heating solutions provider Watlow has produced a White Paper guide on applications of its miniaturized ceramic heaters for advanced technologies, including for the pharmaceutical and medical devices industry.

The technical article Better Heaters Mean More Innovative Analytical Equipment is authored by Watlow Chief Systems Designer Andy Selvy and details the advantages that advanced ceramic heaters can bring to the design and marketing of analytical equipment.

Advanced heating technology

The White Paper recognizes huge advances in heating technology with  today’s advanced ceramic heaters now being smaller, faster responding, more accurately controllable and more resistant to environmental contamination than the metal-sheathed equivalents that still power many of today’s equipment designs. They also offer more design flexibility and are easier to integrate into equipment, simplifying the manufacturing and assembly process.

The paper shows how Watlow’s ULTRAMIC advanced ceramic heaters in particular can help analytical equipment manufacturers improve product performance and design, as well as accelerate their time to market. Other benefits include freeing up space within the case, reduced overall machine footprint, increased precision and performance and simplified manufacturing and assembly.

Topics and takeaways

Topics covered include:

• A summary of advanced heater technology:
• The technical properties and advantages of Watlow ULTRAMIC advanced ceramic heaters that stem from their aluminum nitride (AlN) construction
• The design benefits of incorporating ceramic heaters
• Their advantages in complying with UL® and CE Agency guidelines.
• How they can offer both speed and precision with less need for trade-offs

Key takeaways from the White Paper include that the combined speed and accuracy of ULTRAMIC heaters support a much broader array of applications with implications for design and sourcing.

A further learning point is that ceramic heaters produced with AIN have particular properties relevant to life sciences relevant analytical equipment, such as gas chromatography and mass spectrometry instruments.