Posted to News on 14th Aug 2020, 00:00
Steady state and pulsed infrared emitters from Laser Components
Laser Components has had a successful collaboration with Helioworks, a world leading producer of infrared emitters for many years. Helioworks manufactures a unique range of steady state and pulsed black body emitters in industry standard TO packages. The steady state emitters are based on kanthal filaments while the pulsed devices use either nichrome or tungsten.
The EK-series devices are steady state emitters that operate at 900 degrees centigrade consuming 2.4 Watts at 1.4 Volts maximum and 1.75 Amps into 0.8 Ohms. The units are fitted with gold coated parabolic reflectors as standard and are available with a choice of calcium fluoride, sapphire or zinc selenide windows. Laser Components can also supply the units with no window or with a specific IR material for custom applications.
The EP-series can operate either pulsed or steady state. The tungsten filaments offer a large temperature modulation and desirable signal to noise ratio. These devices can provide output powers up 10W.
One interesting application for these devices is as an infrared source to check the functionality of monitoring instruments in safety critical applications such as flame detection. The emitter can be placed at a significant distance from the instrument and the radiation generates a spectrum that matches a flame. If the instrument is working correctly an alarm is initiated. This provides a quick and reliable testing method without the need for removing the detector from its installed position.
