Q Corporation is a California-based company that designs and manufactures environmental testing systems. One of the company’s biggest markets is automotive testing. That work involves everything from testing the durability of individual car parts to driving entire vehicles into a chamber to subject them to a range of adverse conditions.
As part of that testing process, it is critical for Q Corporation to be able to accurately measure the temperature in its chambers. The company recently selected the Aspyre power controller to accurately measure every BTU in its chambers. “Running the heater with a single SCR let us avoid breaking into smaller circuits and having to fuse them. Single circuits let us rely on the large upstream breakers,” said Jeff Boyer, controls engineer for Q Corporation. “The thing I like that a normal SCR does not have is that it controls power, so it automatically corrects output amps to correct for line voltage changes, which would help on stability-critical applications.”
Q Corporation engineers also said they liked the computer control of the Aspyre. Instead of manually keying in parameters for a test, they can save time by using a computer to preprogram the controller. The physical design was also an advantage when selling the controller.
“On the Aspyre, the wires come straight down through the top of the controller and back out the bottom,” said Steve Ornellas, outside sales engineer. “They can save on panel space. On a different SCR they were looking at, the line wiring was just on one side of the controller, and it was going to take a lot of room to bend the large power cables.”
When Q Corporation received its first Aspyre, the company conducted a full test of the product.“They rented a huge generator on a tractor trailer with live voltage and tested a full load. It worked great,” said Ornellas. “The customer is happy, and Aspyre is doing its job in a factory in North Carolina.”