[time-nuts] Temp control of LPRO
Neville Michie
namichie at gmail.com
Wed Sep 10 10:57:24 UTC 2008
Hi,
I have just commissioned a temperature control for my LPRO rubidium
oscillator.
When I read the specs I noticed that at 18V supply and about 40*C the
unit only requires about
8 watts. That is getting close to what my stand-alone power source
can maintain.
Running at a higher temperature takes a little load off the ovens on
the lamp and the detector,
but it does have a penalty in MTBF. At 40*C I thought the trade-off
was worth it.
Now the local crystal oscillator is not temperature controlled and
its control voltage drifts widely.
So I bolted the LPRO to a plate of aluminium about 1/4 inch thick. On
the other side of the aluminium plate
I bolted heat sink fins about 3/4 long over the whole length.
The whole unit mounts inside a piece of about 3X4 aluminium
extrusion. At one end in a little plenum
chamber I mounted a12V 1 watt 40mm brushless DC ball bearing fan, in
the AL plate I drilled a
deep well in which a bead thermistor lives.
The whole thing is insulated in 1/2 inch plastic foam sheet.
When the fan running on 12V the temperature is held to 4 *C above
ambient. At 8 volts this rises to about 7*C.
The fan is quite unobtrusive on 8 V.
The thermistor is in a bridge circuit and switches the fan in a PWM
control mode with a 50 second cycle time.
The surface of the plate has less than 0.1*C variation over a day
with no sign of the temperature cycling.
The oscillator control voltage now rises on startup and then becomes
rock steady.
The next step is to get on with the building of the gear to measure
how well the LPRO now performs
at constant temperature.
Cheers,
Neville Michie
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