[volt-nuts] DIY Air bath

[Will]

Thanks for the comments. Yesterday I found an old vine cooler / fridge
probably meant for hotel use. Aluminium profile frame and double glass
door, stainless steel inside and outside. The old compressor has been
removed so there is plenty of space for the electronics.


2012/1/17, Marvin E. Gozum <marvin.gozum at jefferson.edu>:
> Some DIY ideas for an environmental chamber.  Note, one thing most
> don't do is alter relative humidity.  To do that you can inject steam.
>
> A key item is getting a chamber big enough for your need.  The heat
> control is fairly easy to design, many approaches.  Cooling to the
> 40F ish area using a Peltier device is simple solution for a chamber
> but its cost efficiency and regulation could be a problem as the cuft
> of the chamber grows.  I think the heating part is generally easy and
> reliable, its getting the right size to save the labor of building
> one from scratch, that has both thermal glass, and insulation to build on.
>
> In the eevblog.com post earlier, Dave uses a reptile incubator, there
> is a variant sold as a portable cooler/refrigerator under the Coleman
> name but the Peltier is set only to cool.  The ReptiPro 5000 or its
> clones, has reportedly unreliable electronics, either the Peltier or
> its thermostat are prone to fail early, but its worth a mod to get a
> good sized chamber that has the infrastructure to build both a
> heating and cooling chamber in one.
>
> You can find incubators new or eBay that will save you the labor of
> building more tightly regulated heat only chambers.  Infant animal
> incubators, egg incubators and bio-lab incubators are typical search terms.
>
> Toaster or convection ovens work for just heating, and the only value
> of changing or supplementing the thermostat is for tighter regulation
> and adding a fan to insure the heat is evenly distributed in larger
> chambers.
>
> If you are lucky to find a used human baby incubator, and have the
> room for it, it has both the size, fan, and regulation for good even
> heating with portholes for working inside the chamber.