Acoustic Testing Meter

I was browsing through ElectronicsCooling magazine recently and noticed an advertisement for a new publication: Environmental Test & Design (ETD). According to ETD’s website, ETD is written for professionals involved in the design, testing, compliance, manufacturing, and recycling of military, aerospace, medical, IT, and industrial electronics. The publication aims to provide its readers with a better understanding of electronics certification, testing, and design. This includes the impact of shock, vibration, temperature, acoustics, etc. on electronic products and how they are designed to withstand these impacts.

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Dental Laser Heat Exchanger

Medical lasers often require liquid cooling to maintain a precise laser wavelength and higher output efficiency, to achieve desired beam quality, and/or to reduce thermal stress on the laser system. Pictured on the left is a custom stainless steel tube-fin heat exchanger that Lytron recently designed and manufactured for an OEM for cooling a dental laser. Although the custom stainless steel tube-fin heat exchanger is very similar to Lytron’s 4000 series standard stainless steel tube-fin heat exchanger, it has custom dimensions to meet the OEM’s specific requirements.

Dental lasers require a stainless steel fluid path in the heat exchanger if they are using deionized (DI) water to cool the laser’s diodes. Unlike copper and aluminum, stainless steel is compatible with DI water and other corrosive fluids. For more information, please review our application note, “Liquid Cooling a Laser for System Optimization.”

Lytron is hiring!

Lytron is growing and, as a result, is looking for talented people to join its team. Current job openings include engineering and buyer/planner positions in Woburn, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. For more information on job openings, please visit Lytron’s careers page. 

Vacuum Chamber and Helium Leak Detector

Lytron recently purchased a new vacuum chamber and helium leak detector for testing custom cold plates and custom heat exchangers for aerospace applications. The helium leak detector can identify leaks of down to 10^-12 mbar l/s.  The vacuum chamber is 50″ (127.00 cm) long and 30″ (76.20 cm) in diameter and can be used to test parts up to 44″ (111.76 cm) long and 29″ (73.66) wide. The purchase of the vacuum chamber and helium leak detector  further expands Lytron’s in-house  test capabilities. For more information, please contact Lytron at +1-781-933-7300.

Recirculating chiller cools form, fill, seal machines

Many manufacturers rely on Lytron’s recirculating chillers to keep their production lines cool. Sage Products, a disposable healthcare products manufacturer, uses Lytron recirculating chillers to cool each of its form, fill, and seal machines. The form, fill, and seal machine shown in the background of the photo uses five spider robots to load five different products into one form-fill-seal blister pack. Congratulations to Kevin at Sage Products for winning the “Coolest Photo” contest! 

SEM Image of Alumina Nanoparticles Courtesy of Olin College of Engineering

Research continues for ways to improve the performance of cold plates and heat exchangers to handle increasingly high heat load densities for electronics cooling. Dr. Jessica Townsend, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, recently published a paper on nanofluids with her colleague Dr. Rebecca J. Christianson, assistant professor of applied physics. The paper, “Nanofluid Properties and Their Effects on Convective Heat Transfer in an Electronics Cooling Application,” shows some very promising results in the use of nanofluids for liquid cooling.

The findings of Dr. Townsend’s and Dr. Christianson’s research included up to an additional 8°C reduction in chip temperature when a 1% volume fraction of alumina-in-water nanofluid was used as the coolant in a liquid cooling loop in place of deionized water. Alumina-in-water at a 2% and 5% volume fraction was also investigated but resulted in a much smaller decrease in junction temperature.

Dr. Townsend and Dr. Christianson are planning future experimental studies to look at whether nanofluid thermal conductivity increases anomalously with temperature and whether nanoparticle size is a factor. This could result in the potential to “tune” nanofluids for more effective performance at particular temperature ranges.

Townsend, J, Christianson, R. J., 2009, “Nanofluid Properties and Their Effects on Convective Heat Transfer in an Electronics Cooling Application,” Journal of Thermal Science and Engineering Applications, Transactions of the ASME, Vol. 1 / 031006-1.

Faulkner, D. J., Rector, D. R., Davidson, J. J., Shekarriz, R., 2004, “Enhanced Heat Transfer Through the Use of Nanofluids in Forced Convection,” Proceedings of the 2004 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, pp. 219-224.

Lee, J., Mudawar, I., 2007, “Assessment of the Effectiveness of Nanofluids for Single-Phase and Two-Phase Heat Transfer in Micro-Channels,” International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 50(3-4), pp. 452-463.

Chein, R., Chuang, J., 2007, “Experimental Microchannel Heat Sink Performance Studies Using Nanofluids,” International Journal of Thermal Sciences, 46(1), pp. 57-66.

Valencia, G. E., Ramos, M. A., Bula, A. J., 2007, “Experimental Evaluation of the Convective Heat Transfer Coefficients in a Nanofluid-Cooled Milli Channels Heat Sink,” Proceedings of the 2007 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, pp. 31-37.

Cool Industrial Laser Photo