I have an Arduino thing I have built, that is an oven for making rubber strips.
What this is, is a heating element with a strip of aluminum suspended ~3 inches above it on wires. I need to monitor the temperature of the strip to keep it 130 to maybe 150F, and within about 5 degrees over or under. The wet rubber is extruded on top of the strip.
The previous enclosed version of this oven used a TMP36 sensor that was accurate enough, but that was in an enclosed air space, which this version doesn't have. The TMP36 is an analog sensor in an ordinary plastic TO-92 case, so it doesn't really have any directional discrimination. I was going to try using it by placing it near the underside of the strip, but am wondering if an IR/non-contact sensor might do better. I could spend maybe $50 tops here, and it must be something I can connect to the Arduino, since that is the timer & heater control being used.
There is a lot of IR-type sensors around, but I have not used them in a project before. I have seen in the past that cheaper IR thermometers don't work correctly on polished metal due to the metal's surface not radiating heat normally. Really expensive lab/industrial IR thermometers have the ability to use an emissivity setting to try to account for this problem, but mathematically (or circuit-wise) I don't know how they do that...
http://www.pyrometer.com/Products/Non-Contact-IR
Are there any sensors that avoid that problem entirely? Or is there any info online about how it can be estimated from a reading from a normal non-contact sensor?
What this is, is a heating element with a strip of aluminum suspended ~3 inches above it on wires. I need to monitor the temperature of the strip to keep it 130 to maybe 150F, and within about 5 degrees over or under. The wet rubber is extruded on top of the strip.
The previous enclosed version of this oven used a TMP36 sensor that was accurate enough, but that was in an enclosed air space, which this version doesn't have. The TMP36 is an analog sensor in an ordinary plastic TO-92 case, so it doesn't really have any directional discrimination. I was going to try using it by placing it near the underside of the strip, but am wondering if an IR/non-contact sensor might do better. I could spend maybe $50 tops here, and it must be something I can connect to the Arduino, since that is the timer & heater control being used.
There is a lot of IR-type sensors around, but I have not used them in a project before. I have seen in the past that cheaper IR thermometers don't work correctly on polished metal due to the metal's surface not radiating heat normally. Really expensive lab/industrial IR thermometers have the ability to use an emissivity setting to try to account for this problem, but mathematically (or circuit-wise) I don't know how they do that...
http://www.pyrometer.com/Products/Non-Contact-IR
Are there any sensors that avoid that problem entirely? Or is there any info online about how it can be estimated from a reading from a normal non-contact sensor?
