Watlow Temperature Control Box
The Watlow Temperature Control Box Handbook
insert super sxe pic of watlow box bound to get any system heated up
© GDS Instruments Ltd
The Watlow user's manual describes the hardware, communication settings, and test control of temperature. Please refer to the GDSLAB software manual for information about setting up and running software for your system.
Introduction
The Watlow temperature control box (generally referred to as the Watlow box) is a temperature control device with the capability of monitoring up to 4 devices at the same time. These devices can be a mixture of local PT100 instruments and heating pads.
Data transfer from the box to GDSLab is via RS232 serial communication using a PC comm port.
A PT100 will always be set as device one, heating pads will have to be connected to the respective 2, 3, 4 thermocouple slots on the rear of the Watlow box.
Serial Communication Settings
To receive temperature readings from sensors and set targets, the following communication settings will need to be input.
Left-click on Watlow device to input the following com settings.
Baud: 9600
Parity: n
Data Bits: 8
Stop Bits: 2
Right-click on the Watlow device to be greeted by this screen, ensure node address is 1.
Temperature Control Settings in GDSLab
Using the Advanced Loading test module, temperature control can be enabled by clicking “Settings” in the top left hand of the test window, then, “Set Allow Temperature Control TRUE” option will have to be enabled.
After proceeding from the initial “Triaxial Test Setup” window, the temperature control options window will be presented. The example below shows a specimen temperature ramp to 10Cº in 60 minutes and a constant cell temperature target of 50Cº.
Navigating the EZ-ZONE PM PID Controller Display
Keys and Displayed Messages
The Watlow EZ-ZONE PM PID Controller has many menus to navigate through with various submenus within these. The image below lists each key on the interface and its function for the range of Watlow controllers supplied by GDS Instruments. For the Watlow heating box, the control unit used it the type 1/16 DIN (PM6) as shown below:
If the system has an issue, an error message will be displayed on the screen. If you are unable to resolve this issue, please do not hesitate to contact us at http://gdsinstruments.helpserve.com/.
The full table of error troubleshooting can be found in the document below.
The Operations Page
The operations page contains functions for Watlow heating box to perform.
The full table of every menu option and their description for the Operations Page can be found in the document below.
The Setup Page
The setup page contains the configuration settings for how the Watlow box performs its operations.
The full table of every menu option and their description for the Setup Page can be found in the document below.
The full manufactures document can be downloaded below.