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
Contents
The Watlow users 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.
1 Introduction
2 RS232 Serial Communication Settings
3 Temperature Control Settings in GDSLab
1 Introduction
The Watlow temperature control box (generally referred to as the Watlow bow) is a temperature control device with the capability of monitoring up to 4 devices at a 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, heat pads following this will have to be connected to the respective 2, 3, 4 thermocouple slots on the rear of the Watlow box.
2 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.
3 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.