Thermal Shock Chambers Uses & Benefits

Thermal shock chambers are used to produce test results pertaining to a material’s capability to withstand different level of climate/environmental changes between high and low temperature changes within a short span of time. The primary use of thermal test chambers is to help understand the physical changes in the structure of the material by expansion of material due to high heat and contraction due to low temperature settings. This can be achieved within a span of couple of minutes and results can be used in defining the lifetime as well as durability of the product.

Thermal shock chambers are used for testing of metal, rubber, plastic, electronics, pharma and other materials for special purposes.

There are different types of test done using thermal shock chambers:

1. Design Validation: A product is tested in a test chamber to ensure that the product will work in the normal environment it will encounter during its life cycle. It is specific application driven and can be done during the R&D phase. The goal is the pass the test and meet the specification required without any failures to develop a robust product.

2. Product Validation: Thermal shock chambers are used to ensure that the product meets the requirements, specifications and regulation for which it is intended. The product validation process uses simulation similar to those of design validation to for see fall through gaps in design or manufacturing to prevent product failures when consumers are using the end product.

3. Environment Stress Screening: ESS process uses a variety of stresses such as thermal screening & thermal cycling to force latent defects in a newly manufactured or a repaired product typically electronic. Products meeting the set standard/passing the tests are validated as products with higher reliability in multiple environments.

4. Product Life Cycle Testing: Here the thermal shock chambers are used to simulate real world stresses in order to predict the life span of the product.

Main benefits of Thermal Shock Chambers include the following:

· Improved product reliability

· Improved product quality

· Reduction in warranty costs

· Increased Profitability

· Competitive Advantage over inferior quality products

There are many thermal shock chamber manufacturers who engineer test chambers to allow manufacturers to gauge real-world stresses like temperature and humidity on a product. Most of the thermal shock chambers are manufactured to cater multiple applications without the need of software or hardware modification.