Environmental chamber– it is a safe place for testing everything (biological products to electronic products) from heat to vibration and stress or creates an environment for testing variables. Environmental chamber comes in various shapes, sizes and types. The most common type of environmental chamber is for thermal testing (heating as well as cooling qualities); thermal shock chambers. Environmental chambers customary use is for testing parts; some environmental chambers are used to grow cultures or specialized crops without outside influence.
Environmental chambers are suitable for carrying out different quality control tests under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. Vibration analysis, moisture absorption and stress testing are also common functions of environmental chambers. One of the major advantages of environmental chamber is that the environmental testing allows organization to design and produce products that are more reliable and safer for their intended end use.
The environmental testing industry offers many types of test chambers ranging from small benchtop style chambers to chambers as large as a room. The test application and product loading requirements will primarily determine the type of chamber needed.
- Benchtop Chambers; these chambers are the smallest size of environmental test chamber typically ranging from 0.5 cubic feet to 5.5 cubic feet. This is fine for many commercial and industrial tests that require low temperatures of typically 0°C, -10°C or -25°C.Benchtop chambers are ideal for testing smaller products such as computer components, automobile sensors or cellular phones, these chambers combine superior performance with compact design that is perfect for research and development or personal point-of-use testing. These chambers can be mounted in an instrument rack or will easily sit on a laboratory benchtop.
- Upright or Reach-in Chambers; also known as Upright Chambers. Upright or Reach-in chambers can range from 4 to 70 cubic feet or larger and are able to stimulate almost any environment. Temperature, humidity, altitude, rain, solar and vibration are just some of the environments that can be produced by an upright or rich-in chamber. Reach-in environmental chambers provide a flexibility chambers provide a flexibility and economy of space that full sized rooms are unable to offer. By lining the walls of a room with reach-in chambers, researchers can maintain multiple environments, each with their own temperature, humidity and lighting levels, while maximizing the available space.
- Walk-in Chambers; walk-in chambers are environmentally conditioned rooms ranging in size from those big enough to step into or those large enough to drive into. They can be used to test large components, assemblies and finished products, from computers and copiers to automobiles and satellites throughout a wide range of temperature and humidity environments. Walk-in can also be used as a laboratory environment for conducting test procedure in food processing, pharmaceutical and scientific applications. They offer temperature and humidity simulation capabilities for climatic testing and temperature/humidity cycling whenever there is a need to simulate wide temperature and humidity extremes. They can be made almost any length, width or height.
- Thermal shock Chambers;The most common type of environmental chamber is for thermal testing (heating as well as cooling qualities); thermal shock chambers. Thermal shock chambers have the ability to shock a product by moving it from a high temperature to a low temperature. With two or three separately controlled temperature zones between which products are automatically transferred, they thermally shock and stress a product quickly, exposing its reliability in the process. These chambers are available in different sizes and configurations depending on testing requirements.
