Pooshamp
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Heating mantle with heat controller
Quick question, would a heating mantle with built in heat control still need a variable autotransformer? ex. variac can it be plugged directly to an
outlet? I understand that a regulator is needed to control heat in a plain heating mantle without any controls.
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careysub
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A heating mantle needs a variable voltage input to control the heating power (but not necessarily a variac, I think variable DC works as well like
switching power supply). If it has a control on it I assume this would be built in.
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Photonic
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As long as the mantle has feedback from a temperature sensor and is rated for line voltage you can absolutely throw it on a PID controller with on/off
control. You only get into trouble if the feedback gets disconnected and you melt your mantle. You can get a chinese PID with a solid state relay for
sub $50 on ebay. Possibly as low as ~$20 in some cases. Do some research on the brand you get though.
Glas Col has some power controllers but if I remember correctly they are just triacs, but they have several products. Triacs work by clipping the
input waveform which changes the average power delivered to the load (mantle).
If you were referring to ones that have an outlet plug and a control on the unit for power then you probably don't need a variac but I'd have to see
the model/item to be for sure but you should be easily able to tell by just looking at a spec sheet.
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Pooshamp
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My mantle probably does have its own controls built in and a pid controller seems like a good safety precaution to have, i should research more on
that.
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Photonic
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A PID controller would really only be useful for a unit that has no controller such as for use with the Glas-col mantles. They really need "direct
control" of the unit to operate properly.
PID stands for Proportional Integral Derivative. There also exists a "P controller" or PI, and so forth depending on the application. These have to do
with the mathematical functions used in determining the off/on control to get to the set point with minimal error.
For a PID controller to work it has to have feedback - the temperature sensor. If feedback is removed, however, it could just stay on thinking it has
a larger thermal mass to heat. Some controllers like in the IKA HB10 can detect when no water is in the hot bath by the fast change in temperature,
and other complete units have similar fail safes to not overheat but using an off the shelf PID controller probably will not have these fail safes.
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