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Having discrete sensors and heaters can complicate thermal management. In ideal configurations, a heater heats a heat sink and a sensor attaches to the sink in order to regulate temperature. But with a heater attached directly to a heat sink’s surface, it may be challenging to find a good location to attach the sensor.

The solution involves integrating the sensor beneath the heater’s polyimide cover, which allows the assembly to not only heat the sink but also press the sensor against it for the most accurate reading possible.

Minco’s latest white paper explores the advantages of this technique but also reasons why it might not be the best option for your project.

Whitepaper Download: Integrating Thin-Film Sensors into Polyimide Heaters

In this free whitepaper, we share:

• How integrating sensors and heaters makes for more accurate temperature measurement
• How this technique simplifies wiring and installation
• How integration actually saves money through simplified installation and superior cost of ownership

The post Integrating Thin-Film Sensors into Polyimide Heaters appeared first on Minco.

You’ve got a lot of options when choosing an industrial heater. Specs and cost will help you narrow it down, but you may end up with several options that seem equally viable. The difference between mica heaters and cartridge heaters is one such example.

Both mica heaters and cartridge heaters are used to apply heat evenly and selectively, but their unique properties can make the choice easier. To simplify the choice — and to help you pick the right heater type for your application — our new whitepaper compares mica and cartridge heaters head-to-head.

Whitepaper Download: Comparing Mica and Cartridge Heaters

Read Minco’s new whitepaper for free to learn:

• What mica and cartridge heaters have in common
• How they’re different
• The key benefits and drawbacks of each heater type
• Real-world use cases for mica and cartridge heaters

It’s easy to say that mica and cartridge heaters ‘do the same thing’ — but by the same logic, so does every industrial heater type. When it comes time to choose, you’ll need to consider a lot more than cost to make the right decision for your application.

Of course, the industrial heating conversation doesn’t end with mica vs. cartridge. Read the comprehensive Minco Thermal Solutions Design Guide for an overview of the many products that can help you achieve your industrial heating goals.

The post Mica or Cartridge Heaters? Specs, Benefits, Drawbacks & More appeared first on Minco.

Inrush currents – the quick power draw when a self-limiting heater is powered on – can be damaging to heaters and equipment. To discover new ways of reducing inrush currents during the power-on sequence, we conducted three experiments with our SmartHeat SLT heaters, utilizing three different strategies to measure how effective each method was at reducing inrush current concerns.

You can read more about our inrush current mitigation experiments by downloading our new whitepaper here:

WHITEPAPER: Controlling Inrush Currents in SmartHeat SLT Heaters

Inrush current draw is especially problematic in applications below -55°C (like aerospace), but it can have an impact almost anywhere industrial heating is used. At up to 20 times higher than steady-state currents, inrush currents can trip circuit breakers, short devices, consume excess power, and add to equipment downtime. Our experiments produced one method that cut inrush current by half, and another that brought it down to just 1 Amp.

Read the whitepaper above to find out more about our experiments and how you can extend the life and efficiency of your heaters with SmartHeat. The minds at Minco are always looking for innovative ways to engineer solutions to immediate challenges – and you can find out all about our engineer-to-engineer (E2E) approach in our free ebook here.

The post How We Cut Inrush Current Draw By Half – Or More – With SmartHeat SLT appeared first on Minco.

Why mica?

Mica is a silicate mineral often used in electronics and other electric and heating applications. Rather than one distinct mineral, mica is the name used for a group of minerals that can have different chemistry depending on the other atoms within its atomic structure, like aluminum, magnesium, calcium, iron, and others. Mica’s mineral structure gives it a high electrical resistance along with resistance to light and moisture, making it a great insulator in industrial applications.

Mica helps heating elements get hot quickly, heat evenly, and cool quickly, which is why mica is often used in consumer electronics like kitchen toasters and space heaters as the heat-resistant material that supports heating elements. In mica industrial heaters, an etched foil element is sandwiched between layers of mica. Because mica heaters can reach temperatures beyond what adhesives are spec’d for, the heater is installed to a heat sink using clamps, which also allow it to distribute heat more evenly.

Our design and manufacturing process can even tailor the heating profile of a mica heater to make one part of the heater hotter than another. We do that by varying the width of the etched element. This is a standard capability of etched foil heaters, and Minco Mica Thermofoil heaters can be customized the same way.

How are mica heaters used?

The features of mica heaters make them versatile across many different industrial applications. Since they allow you to put heat where you want it while staying within a uniform temperature, they’re ideal for…

• Semiconductor processing
• Packaging, strapping, and sealing equipment
• DNA thermocycling
• Food service appliances
• Supplemental heat for plastics and rubber molding

To give you an idea of the versatility of mica heaters, one Minco customer uses Minco Mica Thermofoil heaters to fuse PVC pipes. It’s a highly exacting process that requires quick, consistent application of heat to two pipe surfaces at once. Mica is a great fit for this unique use case because it allows the user to quickly apply even, consistent heat across a large area (i.e., the diameter of the pipe’s mouth) that wouldn’t be possible with other heater types.

Advantages and disadvantages of mica heaters

Mica heaters have a few distinct advantages over other heater types. For one, they’re excellent conductors of heat, and clamping enables them to distribute it uniformly in many applications. For example, Minco Mica Thermofoil— heaters provide a broad temperature range of -150°C to 600°C (-238°F to 1112°F) and a high watt density (up to 110 W/in²) for faster processing times than conventional mica heaters. Also, while they’re often supplied flat, mica heaters can be pre-formed to curves (like inside pipes or other non-standard surfaces).

Want to know more about mica heater design?
Download the Minco Thermal Solutions Design Guide here.

Handling can be an issue with mica heaters: mica is a formed mineral sheet, which can be damaged more easily. The porous nature of mica makes it a challenge in high vacuum applications. Arguably the biggest downside to mica heaters is that they’re installed using clamps rather than adhesive or tape. Clamping enables one of the biggest benefits of mica heaters – but it also means they either have to be custom designed to account for clamping or the user is left to devise a means of clamping in the application. This customization can add cost to development, but it can pay off with lower assembly costs in production.

Comparing mica heaters to other options

If you’re in the market for industrial heaters, you may wonder what the main differences are between mica and other types of heaters. Here’s a basic rundown of their advantages and disadvantages in key areas.

Mica heaters vs. ceramic heaters

• Lifecycle: Ceramic heaters generally have a longer life expectancy than mica heaters (but this depends on the application and average heat range utilized).
• Temperatures: Mica heaters have a temperature range up to 600°C (1112°F). Ceramic heaters operate in temperatures up to about 760°C (1400°F), giving ceramic heaters a slight advantage over mica in industrial applications.
• Customizability: Mica heaters are much more customizable than ceramic heaters. That’s because mica sheets can be cut to almost any size or shape you need, making it a great material for unique or awkward applications.
• Watt density: Clamping layers of mica provides better heat transfer to the surface and a more uniform distribution. The watt density profile can be custom designed to put heat where it is needed on the heating surface. 

Mica heaters vs. cartridge heaters 

Advantages of cartridge heaters:

• More standard sizes and power options available than mica heaters.
• Can be easy to install and replace when damaged.
• Generally lower cost than mica (but not always).
• Simpler to create a vacuum or fluid seal around the heating element to lead wire exit.

Disadvantages of cartridge heaters:

• Element temperature runs higher than flexible mica Thermofoil heaters, which can lead to failures in the heating element.
• Fit to hole can change over time in cartridge heater, which can lead to changes in heating performance and failure.
• Cartridge heaters require a heatsink that is thick enough to have a hole drilled into it.
• Cartridge heaters require a thicker heatsink to allow the heat to spread out from the individual heatsink points of the cartridges.

Advantages of mica Thermofoil heaters:

• Mica heaters are more customizable than cartridge heaters.
• Mica heaters perform better in highly customized sizes, shapes and power options.
• Mica heaters make it easier to achieve higher heating surface watt densities.
• Mica doesn’t need insertion holes drilled into it, which is better for thinner heatsinks.

Disadvantages of mica Thermofoil heaters:

• Mica heaters require a clamping plate.
• Customization means they can be more expensive for simpler heating applications.
• Outgassing of the heater may be required depending on the end use.
• The wire exit area from the heater can be more fragile. 

How Minco Thermofoil Mica heaters excel

The additional investment in mica heaters means you need to be able to control as many factors of design and manufacturing as possible to increase efficiency and decrease costs. Mica heaters from Minco offer all the benefits of mica heaters along with our custom design capabilities to ensure you get exactly what you need for your application.

Additionally, we conduct thermal modeling to ensure your mica heaters meet your temperature uniformity goals. Thermal modeling can increase the efficiency of production and cut out the time and money you’d normally spend on second and third iterations of your custom-designed heater.

Interested in learning more about using mica heaters in your application?
Find more information on Minco Mica Thermofoil— heaters here.

The post Should You Be Using Mica Heaters? Here’s What You Need to Know appeared first on Minco.

One of the advantages of working with us is that we excel in so many technologies suited for
different applications.

Case in point, our fast thermal cycling All-Polyimide (AP) heaters.

Created using an adhesiveless polyimide film along with a unique Minco manufacturing technique, AP heaters serve as Minco’s high-performance alternative to standard polyimide heaters. Freed from the limitations brought by the adhesive, AP heaters feature superior maximum operating temperature of 500°F/260°C and power ratings to 100 W/in² (18.6 W/cm²) – twice the watt density of typical polyimide heaters. A thinner stackup of materials for AP allow the heaters to cool down quickly, which is critical to certain operations requiring
thermal cycling.

Let’s explore some of the advantages of using Minco AP heaters:
 

Point-of-Care Devices: Smaller and Hotter Than Ever

One area where AP heaters shine is the field of handheld and point-of-care medical devices such as blood analyzers, glucose meters, and blood pressure meters. The portable form factors of these devices has revolutionized the way care is delivered, promoting efficiency and reducing the amount patients
have to be moved.

The challenge is that these devices require all components be as small as possible. Every generation of device has more tightly packed components and more restrictive electrical requirements. For this reason, medical device manufacturers rely on Minco’s AP to deliver the thermal qualities in watt densities traditional thermofoil can’t attain. For example, a 100W heater measuring 2”x5” has a watt density of 10W/in², whereas a 300W Minco AP heater in a 1”x3” space is 300W. If the device’s size keeps shrinking, watt density must keep up.

Thanks to AP’s adhesiveless, low-mass construction, its elements can be etched to a finer pitch and higher resistance density than the competition’s heaters. The result of this is the ability to make heaters
smaller than ever.

Cooldown: The Hidden AP Advantage

While AP heaters offer compelling advantages over typical heaters, one of the most notable may be its ability to cycle quickly, both heating up as well as rapidly cooling down. While a lot of heaters on the market offer rapid heat-up, these heaters often feature a higher mass and are more insulating – and the consequence of this is that they do not cool down very quickly.

Minco’s AP heaters cycle considerably faster than the competition’s high-performance heaters, thanks to the heaters low-mass construction. This means devices are able to cycle faster without overheating and failing.

AP heaters’ fast cooldown offers customers a couple of key advantages:

• Able to perform more processes in quantifiably less time to help customers reach cost-per-test or throughput efficiency goals.
• Accommodates certain technically challenging medical processes like DNA amplification where faster cycling is a technical requirement of the process.

Minco AP vs Competitors’ High-Performance Heaters

Other companies sell all-polyimide heaters, but Minco’s AP heaters offer distinct advantages over these competitors, particularly in the areas of cycle time and product life.

Minco engineers recently conducted a test comparing cycling time between AP heaters and a variety of competing polyimide-based heaters. Each heater was cycled five times from 25°C to 98.5°C, with each cycle timed, then all the results averaged out.

We found a significant cycle-time advantage for Minco AP heaters. An AP heater installed using Minco #16 PSA cycled 30% faster than a competitor’s high-performance heater, 119 vs. 155 seconds for a complete cycle. The use of lower-density materials and Minco’s advanced manufacturing techniques made the difference.

Minco AP heaters also last longer under high-temperature conditions. Minco’s industry-leading lamination process allows our AP heaters to consistently reach 260C without danger of delamination. Competitors’ all-polyimide heaters cannot withstand 260°C for a long period of time – the adhesive layer of the product becomes unstable and the heater de-laminates or loses its dielectric strength.

Beyond advantages in rapid cycling and high-temperature applications, AP heaters still offer the benefits of typical flexible film heaters on the market, including easy installation and custom temperature profiling to tailor thermal performance.

Making AP Work for You

The easiest way to get all-polyimide heaters is to buy them online; Minco offers a number of standard products in our online store, most of which are available for immediate shipment.

However, we recommend custom solutions for many projects. Building custom allows Minco engineers to design and manufacture each component specially for each customer, ensuring it works perfectly for that application.

At Minco, we’re accustomed to working engineer-to-engineer (E2E), a collaboration process that allows our partners to leverage our engineering know-how early in the process. Not only can we customize the heating configuration, but we often discover efficiency and performance opportunities by adding flex connectors, sensors, and other components to the assembly.

Contact us to learn more about Minco All-Polyimide heaters or to discuss a custom project.

The post Minco’s All-Polyimide Heaters Excel at Fast Cycling Applications appeared first on Minco.

Minco’s SmartHeat SLT heaters are one of the most exciting innovations in thermal management available today. SmartHeat is self-limiting, meaning it maintains a setpoint with no sensor or controller needed, using a unique polymer innerlay to regulate the temperature. Heating power is applied and modulated at infinite points across the entire heating surface based on the heat load. As the temperature approaches the setpoint, resistance increases in the polymer, throttling the power so that the temperature never exceeds the designed setpoint. This implicit control system protects the heater, heat sink, and application peripherals.

We are happy to announce that Minco has doubled the standard SmartHeat models available on Minco Components. Currently we sell 12 heaters on the site, all operating between 40-60°C. We are now introducing another set of 12 heaters operating at a cooler set point between 20-40°C. These new heaters feature the same nominal voltage – 12, 48, or 120V – regardless of size or temperature range.

It’s now easier than ever to prototype a thermal management solution that will simplify device design and reduce the product launch cycle. Visit Minco Components to select the perfect SmartHeat SLT heater for your application, or contact Minco today to talk about a custom solution.

The post Minco Offering Expanded Line of SmartHeat SLT™ Heaters appeared first on Minco.

In today’s competitive markets, manufacturers are always looking for ways to cut costs, slash time to market, and improve product performance. But while component buyers are price sensitive, they also look at measures like total cost of ownership, reliability, performance, and customization. This is particularly true of technical products in fields like medical diagnostics, aerospace, powergen and military and defense where failure is simply not an option. Designers of those products, and others like them, recognize that the cost of a specialized component or an integrated assembly can be more than offset by reduced assembly cost. They know that speed to market can help maximize the profitability of a new or improved product. And they rely on their suppliers to help eliminate risk in demanding markets.

Minco’s Product Groups:

Minco’s vast institutional knowledge makes for a wide range of capabilities. Over the years the company has chosen to master three product groups.

The company brings its unique engineering expertise and manufacturing capabilities to each of these areas and works closely with customers to meet the most demanding challenges, both quickly and cost-effectively.

Minco focuses its expertise in several product areas:

• Heaters: Driven by customer needs, Minco’s Thermal Solutions engineers can customize thermofoil heaters in irregular shapes and sizes. Leadwire, flex-circuit, or solder pad terminations can be configured to simplify integration, and heaters can be zoned to put heat precisely where you want it.
• Sensors and Control: Minco’s Temperature Sensing and Control Solutions (TSCS) product group manufactures a wide array of standard and custom temperature sensors, including probes, probe assemblies, bearing embedment, bolt-on, HVAC sensors, stator winding sensors, surface-mounted ribbon sensors, and a lot more in RTD, thermocouple and thermistor configurations. We also offer control instrumentation for managing sensors and heaters.
• Flex Circuits: The company’s flex circuit expertise is unsurpassed in the industry. Minco flex circuits can range from single- to multilayer designs, with a special focus on Rigid Flex designs that puts us at the forefront of this exciting technology. Fine line dimensions and selective bonding save space and reduce weight, and circuits can incorporate custom stiffeners, pins, connectors, and inductive communication coils into turnkey electronics packages.
• Assemblies: Minco can tie all these capabilities together into single, easy-to-install integrated solutions. Thermofoil heaters, sensors, instruments, and flex circuits can be integrated into a single unit, simplifying assembly, reducing end-product cost and boosting quality and reliability.\

How We Operate

What sets Minco apart isn’t just the products we deliver but how we function as a company and interact with our customers to develop and deliver those products.

Minco is uniquely positioned to meet performance requirements and help speed customers’ innovative products to market. The company is specifically set up to work with customers on new product introduction (NPI) with early manufacturability analysis and a streamlined approach to prototyping. With over 100 engineers, the company encourages early engineer-to-engineer (E2E) engagement to deliver robust, reliable, and cost-effective solutions while simplifying the development process. The company adheres to rigid quality standards, provides thorough documentation, and maintains the highest level of up-to-date certifications. Minco engineers have partnered with thousands of customer engineering teams to understand their needs and design, prototype, and mass produce solutions. We bring as many engineering disciplines as necessary to bear on a challenge to produce, not just a product, but an integrated solution designed for efficient assembly, superior performance, and maximum reliability.

This approach is no accident. Minco’s process-based approach begins with intense, company-wide focus on customer requirements. For speed and efficiency, the company encourages decision making at the lowest levels possible, particularly those closest to the customer. And, from top to bottom, the company strives to make continuous improvement more than just a slogan.

The post Minco Helps Customers Lead and Thrive in Competitive Markets appeared first on Minco.

The marketing team at Minco is excited to share our latest project: The Engineer’s Corner podcast. We sat down with five experts to discuss one of our most fascinating products: SmartHeat SLT self-limiting heaters.

Participants included product managers Brian Williams and Steve Romslo, as well as engineers Paul Lefief, Jack Stangl, and Joe Wagner, all working in Minco’s Thermal Solutions product group. In the podcast the team talks about the advantages of the remarkable technology behind SmartHeat, which allows the heaters to operate without sensors or instrumentation. Listen and learn more about this unique product.

Planned topics for the Engineer’s Corner podcast include New Flex Product Pitfalls, an update on our temperature probe fittings, and coverage of new equipment in our factory. Subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator today.

To find more information about SmartHeat, refer to our dedicated product page, which includes links to sales literature, a product brief, a white paper, and a lot more.

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