Flexible heaters are used in multiple industries. The greatest advantage of these heaters is their durability and precision. This allows manufacturers to design and produce custom flexible heating elements to meet specific requirements per industry requirements and regulations.
Understanding Flexible Heating Elements and their Advantages
Manufacturers who specialize in producing custom flexible heating elements can design these heaters using a variety of flexible materials such as butyl, mica, Kapton®, and silicone rubber. Such materials can provide different application benefits such as resistance to UV damage, moisture, and chemicals.
Flexible materials also give the engineers the freedom to design the heaters in a variety of custom shapes, sizes, and thicknesses. They can also be manufactured with multiple circuits, and custom watt densities.
Common Customizations for Flexible Heaters
For industrial applications, temperature control is perhaps the most important aspect that needs to be addressed and achieved. While ‘custom’ obviously means specially designed, there are a few solution driven components that are offered to amplify the heating process as well as make the heater more versatile in applications. Let’s a take a look at these below.
- Thermostats: This is a simple option that can be used to ensure basic control of the heating element. If other control systems are being used, they also come in handy as thermal cutoffs.
- Controllers:A variety of controllers can be utilized to control several aspects of the heating process. A good example is multi-function controllers. These give the user complete freedom in terms of controlling the heater’s temperature, power switching, and safety disconnects. This type of controller can make it easier for the user as he needs to monitor only one device rather than several devices.
- Sensors: Today, various types of technologies can be added directly into the design of the heater to enhance the heater’s performance as well as its versatility. The latest example is nano-materials. This material is electrically conductive and creates electrical resistance to create heat. The best part is that the sensor material is self-regulating, and can automatically change to fit the ambient temperature of a room. The result of this temperature self-regulation is a decrease in electricity consumption.
By directly installing these components into the flexible heater, the customer is assured that the heating process utilized in his application will be stable, and will provide accurate results.