Development of hot-thermocouple system for accurately controlling temperature with high degrees of freedom

Kimura, Rintaro*; Sumita, Takehiro*   ; Osawa, Takahito  ; Matsuno, Kota*; Nakashima, Kunihiko*; Saito, Noritaka*

The new system developed in this study overcomes this technical difficulty by employing LabVIEW, which is a graphical programming environment for measurement and control. The system allows us to control the temperature with high precision and a high degree of freedom. This device can be fabricated using only basic engineering knowledge by simplifying the electrical circuits of conventional hot-thermocouple devices. Test measurements demonstrated the reliability of temperature measurement using the developed system as well as its promising potential for temperature control of samples with complex patterns (e.g., sinusoidal wave with an amplitude of 50C and a period of 1 s). Furthermore, the production of a time-temperature-transformation diagram of the CaO-SiO-LiO system was demonstrated by observations of the sample melt using the developed system. By combining with image analysis, the timing of crystallization was determined quantitatively and mechanically, thus successfully eliminating the uncertainty caused by human analysis.