You’ll find ovens in almost every kitchen in America. However, engineers, scientists, and researchers are using slightly more sophisticated varieties in their labs to cook up product innovations.
What are laboratory ovens?
Laboratory ovens climb (and fall) to extreme temperatures for varied purposes essential to clinical research, forensics, electronics, material processing, and product development. Their primary goal is to deliver accurate and reliable temperature control uniform throughout the laboratory oven workspace.
Given how high stakes this kind of testing can be, there is little to no room for deviation from temperature standards.
Notably, laboratory ovens designed to reach extremely cold temperatures are also available, as well.
Laboratory ovens are most ideal for the following processes:
- Aging
- Annealing
- Baking
- Curing
- Drying
- Sterilizing
- And more
These practices are crucial to research, product testing, and design. Just as they vary in use, ovens range in size as well: from less than a cubic foot of volume to as big as 64 cubic feet or more.
What doesn’t change, with an optimized oven from a leading manufacturer, is the precise control over the temperature conditions. Associated Environmental Systems offers two kinds of ovens: Laboratory ovens in the BD series capable of providing highly stable, controlled, forced hot air circulation for specified temperature conditions and liquid-cooled ovens that provide rapid cooling with liquid nitrogen (LN2) or carbon dioxide (CO2).
Read more about how these ovens work below.
Heating System
It’s one thing to have an oven capable of reaching extreme temperatures. It’s quite another to have exacting control over those temperatures. The latter is what sets AES’s laboratory ovens apart from the competition.
The ovens feature industry-leading heating systems. The systems are all-electric and pass air over fast-response, low-watt-density resistance heaters with a ceramic core. The design of the heaters ensures a long, reliable life with no downtime.
The combination of airflow, instrument response, and these fast-reacting heaters provide highly accurate and straight-line control of temperatures.
You can reach temperatures from 38°C to 220°C (100.4°F to 428°F) with an accuracy of ±0.5°C, as measured at the sensor.
Circulation System
The ability to maintain precise temperatures occurs with help from direct, drive-powered fans. The performance level operates the internal workspace temperature to give you control over the temperature range.
Cooling
Rapid Cooling
Though the name evokes extreme heat, laboratory ovens are capable of reaching and maintaining low temperatures. Relying on liquid cooling rather than the standard mechanical refrigeration of traditional test chambers, these ovens feature remarkable pull-down rates that will have you creating conditions as low as -73°C (-99.4°F).
Cryogenic Cooling
Cryogenic temperatures fall at −150°C and colder. If you need to reach these levels—for testing or cold storage—you can do so with a boost cooling option for your oven. The ovens are customizable to feature either LN2 or CO2. These enable the workspace to reach a low of -185°C (while still heating up to 260°C).
Construction
All AES laboratory ovens feature a durable powder-coat finish over heavy-gauge steel, with stainless steel internal construction, and highly-efficient, low K factor, thermal insulation. The construction is optimized to keep your oven operational for a decade or more.
Instrumentation
The standard AES laboratory and liquid-cooled ovens have manual-set digital controllers (the Watlow EZ-ZONE PM). You can upgrade to AESONE CONNECT, a combination hardware and software that enables remote test monitoring. AESONE CONNECT gives you the ability to view current and historical data and easily move between and create test profiles.
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