What Is a Plate Heater?
A plate heater is a generic term for a thin plate heater, which is widely used in all industrial and industrial applications. Various materials are used to make up the plate, and the built-in heaters are resistance heaters. Since the built-in heater alone is not strong enough to be fixed in place, the plate is covered with a plate-like material that serves as the exterior to ensure strength and enable simple fixing.
Some products are equipped with a thermoswitch to prevent over-temperature rise and thermocouples for temperature monitoring.
Uses of Plate Heaters
Plate heaters are used in industrial and industrial facilities such as heating resin molds and press molds, heat sources inside test equipment, dew condensation prevention, and laminating equipment for glass and resin substrates. They are also used in the semiconductor manufacturing field as heat sources for annealing furnaces and etch systems in the liquid crystal panel manufacturing process and as heat sources for vacuum deposition containers.
While most simple products are covered with bonded steel, aluminum, or stainless steel plates, high-precision machined plates of stainless steel, aluminum, ceramic, etc., are used when high precision is required for flatness or when even heat is important.
Principle of Plate Heaters
Plate heaters are a general term for a thin plate-shaped heating source, of which there are various types of configurations.
Generally, plate heaters are mica heaters that sandwich nichrome, stainless steel, nickel, and other materials that reduce heat generation between mica (mica) plates, and then use thin stainless steel sheets, bonded steel sheets, and thin aluminum sheets to compensate for the lack of strength and brittleness of mica, which is common. There are also products in which the built-in heater is a polyimide heater or silicon rubber heater. There are a wide variety of products depending on the application, such as those that are pre-curved to fit curved surfaces, and those that are equipped with high-precision processed plates (stainless steel, aluminum, titanium, copper, ceramic, etc.) with thickness corresponding to the area, instead of thin steel plates. Therefore, there are few off-the-shelf products, and most products are custom-ordered.
The former is used by bringing the plate heaters into contact with the object to be heated, while the latter heats the object by convection or radiation without making contact.
In the latter case, the heater is in an empty state with no thermal load, so care must be taken in setting the heater capacity in consideration of the risk of wire breakage.
Plate heaters play a crucial role in maintaining temperature control, precision heating, and process efficiency in various industries. Their versatility and customizability make them valuable components in a wide range of heating applications.