Largest climatic chamber in Britain installed
06 August 2008
The £43,000 chamber is the largest of its kind in any test laboratory in Britain, and was made in Germany by the Votsch Group and installed by Weiss-Gallenkamp of Loughborough, Leicestershire. Baseefa boss Ron Sinclair said: “This new piece of equipment will greatly improve our testing services to customers, and keep us ahead of our competitors in the service we can provide.
Largest climatic chamber in Britain installed
"We have had four humidity chambers for many years," Sinclair added, "but our largest chamber was beginning to show its age. Now we have this new, 2,000-litre capacity chamber, we have improved the reliability of the testing of larger equipment up to 150kg in weight. It will be a great asset.”
In accordance with the requirements in IEC 60079-0 and IEC 61241-0, climatic chambers are used to thermally condition non-metallic components and parts of Ex equipment, to simulate ageing in the field. The test parameters are usually either 80oC at 90% humidity for four weeks or 95oC at 90% humidity for two weeks, followed by a further two weeks at higher temperatures in a dry oven. The tests can be extremely harsh on plastics, causing deformation, cracking, and shrinkage, as the presence of oxygen in the very hot and humid atmosphere is generally worse than exposure to boiling water alone.
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