Heating a Small Quantity: Ideas & Solutions

[asfd]

I need to melt a small quantity (probably less than a cubic centimeter) of a substance at around 200°C in the most uniform way possible and I'd like to have your ideas about how to heat it. Using easily accessible stuff would be better.

I've thought of controlling a soldering iron with a thermostat but I'm looking forward to hear your ideas.

 

[Artman]

You could use a incandescant light bulb to produce heat and a thermostat to control the bulb.

The soldering iron sounds pretty good, but you may need to design a heat spreader to make it heat evenly enough for your use.

 

[Gokul43201]

Artman's suggestion sounds good, but I would use a water-cooled arc lamp instead of an incandescent bulb. Arc lamps with parabolic reflectors have been used successfully by the rapid thermal annealing industry to provide uniform heat fluxes.

But looking at your suggestion of a soldering iron confuses me. What do you mean by "uniform" ?

Then, there's always the option of a furnace or oven. These provide fairly uniform heat fluxes too.

 

[Artman]

Gokul43201, I figured he was looking at doing this with materials found around the house. Oops, I was going to say that water cooled arc was overkill for 200 deg F, but looking back at the post it was 200 deg C. That's considerably hotter than I was thinking. A high wattage light bulb could still achieve that in a small enough space.

Still, Gokul43201's suggestion may be the best route to reach 200 deg C.

 

[Gokul43201]

Yes, a high wattage bulb would work, but remember, if the bulb gets too hot, it could explode.

What's wrong with just using a regular oven ? Mine goes up to about 250 C with about +/- 10C accuracy.

Need to know asfd's tolerances, as well as what is meant by "uniform heating" - because a soldering iron is the last method I'd use to achieve uniform heating. Perhaps, the intention was to say "uniform heating rate" ? I don't know...

 

[asfd]

You can forget about this"" i found the answer to my problem in an existing thing i can simply buy I'm having some keyboard problem so i'll end my post by thanking you anyway