Tools Find And Maintain Enclosure Cooling

The task of finding and maintaining an enclosure cooling solution has become easier with the introduction of a number of software tools included in version 2.1 of Therm for Windows. The program, offered free of charge, allows users to calculate an enclosure's convective heat loss, cooling requirements and potential climate control solutions. It can even show an air conditioner's actual cooling capacity at a given ambient and internal temperature. The software comes with a library of standard heat loss values for popular components, but also allows the user to add factors for their own commonly-used components. Additionally, it allows the user to calculate an estimated heat loss via measured enclosure temperature rise, without knowing actual component heat dissipation. RiDiag is a new diagnostic tool that determines an air conditioner's historical operating performance. Using a laptop PC and common cable interface, users are said to be able to determine running time, maximum/ambient and internal temperature reached, and the frequency of fault conditions, such as cabinet over-temperature.