Getting the Heat Exactly Where You Need It: Twin Tube IR Lamps
Most off-the-shelf infrared lamps are built for one thing: uniform heat. That’s great for some, but if you’re doing R&D with glass, “uniform” is often the last thing you want. When you’re testing phase transitions or hunting for stress points in a new glass blend, you need a gradient. You need a hot spot here, a cool zone there, and a smooth slope in between. That’s why we build twin tube lamps. We let you actually decide how the power is spread across the length of the emitter. Dialing in the profile The magic of the twin tube design is that it packs double the emitting surface into a tiny footprint. We can shift the heat load wherever you need it by playing with the filament winding pitch and the voltage in different zones. So, if you need a concentrated blast of heat in the center that tapers off toward the edges, we just map out that specific wattage for you. You can pick the voltage and wattage that fits your current power supply, too. If you’re doing quenching tests, you’ll probably want a high-wattage setup for those lightning-fast ramp-up times. Just a heads-up: when you cram extreme power into a short tube, it puts a lot of stress on the quartz. Make sure your housing has plenty of airflow, or you’ll risk burning out the ends. Fitting it into your setup We use high-purity quartz because it lets the short-wave transmission through without any fuss. And since this is for research, we don’t do “catalog sizes.” We don’t want you spending your weekend fabricating new brackets just to make a lamp fit. We’ll customize the length and the connectors—whether you’re using standard R7s or some weird specialized pins—so it just plugs right into your controller and works. Why this actually matters in the lab In glass development, the biggest headache is usually the guesswork. When you can control the exact kW/cm hitting your target, you’re basically simulating a giant industrial furnace on a lab bench. It means you can isolate your variables and actually trust your data. It takes the anxiety out of scaling up. You go from a 10cm sample to a full production run knowing exactly how the material will behave.