TT electronics’ BI Technologies SMT Division has released a series of planar heater products with ratings up to 50W for military, computing, telecommunications, medical and commercial applications.
 
According to Jim Rieley, sales director, the company has developed surface mount, through-hole and custom-profiled planar resistive heaters. “Because they are available in a power rating range of 2 to 50W, they can be used for a wide variety of applications,” Rieley explained. “For example, by spreading our 2W surface mount heaters over PC boards, heat is targeted to where it’s needed to maintain optimum operating temperature in severe cold weather conditions.  Engineers can also position our through-hole planar heaters (3 to 50W) adjacent to individual modules. This targets the heat, rather than heating the complete inside of enclosures, making this method of heating much more energy efficient.”
 
The company also provides profiled heaters for outdoor computer accessories such as keypads, LCD displays, disk drives, card readers and various drive mechanisms. 
 
Thermal measurement components may be placed directly onto the substrate-heating element to provide an accurate interface to the control electronics. Additional applications include military systems, parking meters, medical equipment, telecom repeaters, external cameras, drive mechanisms and printers, as well as baby bottle warmers, domestic irons, hair straighteners, fish tank heaters, hair dryers, air fresheners and bug-free vapor atomizers etc.
 
Printed on ceramic substrates, resistance ranges from 0.1Ω to 100KΩ, with tolerances to ±1%, TCRs to ±100ppm/°C and operating temperature of -55° to +155°C. Maximum operating voltage is 250V.
 
BI Technologies, bitechnologies.com/power