Satellites, Vacuum Chambers, Testing, Laboratory
Fuel Cell Development, Cold Chamber Testing
Concrete Curing, Ground Thaw, Hot Box Heater
Adhesive Application, Epoxy Transfer, 2-Part Spray
EPA-Required Testing, Solar, Biofuel Development, Diesel Emissions
Viscosity Control, Production Technology
Emission Testing, Stack Samples, Analyzer Components, Field Tests
International Space Station, Meteorological Analysis
Machinery, Systems Engineering, Semiconductors
Thermal Testing, Non-Condensate, Instrumentation, Electron Microscopes
Flow Control, Instrumentation, Scientific Research, Optical Resolution
Production Machinery, R&D, Test
Train Car Defrost System, Aviation Freeze Protect, Tank Batteries
Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical
Clayborn Lab is changing the future of technology.
A large Canadian energy supplier has used Clayborn heated tubing for its fuel cell development for many years. When the automotive division of this company needed a high wattage heat exchange tube, they turned to Clayborn. The application called for keeping the fuel cell bus engines warm enough for a cold start during the 2010 Winter Olympics.
A leading plastic part manufacturer came to Clayborn with their need to lubricate and cool plastic stamping equipment. The thermal problem they had centered around viscosity control of the lubricating fluid that was color coded for each application. Clayborn’s solution for this customer was to provide a transparent heated tygon hose that would easily expose the color of the fluid within it.
Product longevity in the application of composites has always been an industry problem. Clayborn has designed the delivery system for two high pressure heated hoses with maximum flexibility by creating individual movement in the lines. By properly bundling the various signal wires, allowing for strain relief and using a chemically-resistive outer sheath, Clayborn has greatly improved product longevity in the harsh environments of composite spraying.
The California University system agreed to provide an ongoing pollution monitoring system for various co-gen facilities. The problem was that each stainless steel sample line was unique to construction and had to be pre-bent prior to heat tracing. Clayborn used our extensive capability to hand-wrap unique shaped objects to be heated to solve the problem.
An international battery manufacturer discovered that electrolyte storage capacity could be significantly increased by heating a battery with its own power in cold overnight conditions. The problem was solved by developing a very thin, precise custom tape heater that would supply the exact amount of heat through a highly efficient thermal transfer.
A large energy source supplier needed a rugged replaceable sample line with an inexpensive temperature control. Clayborn developed a field replaceable sample line within a rugged heated umbilical, internally controlled while attached to an automotive inverter.
In the development of a biomass facility, a customer was concerned about the power consumption used by the lengthy heated sample lines. Clayborn’s engineers designed an ideal solution with long heated tubes requiring minimal power for their sampling needs.
A satellite manufacturing company was interested in conducting a large scale simulation experiment to understand the thermal effects of space and the sun in relation to one of their satellite installation applications. The company came to Clayborn with the schematics for a 38 zone (60 volt) set-up, each zone with an average of 20 custom heaters of varying lengths and resistance specifications. The project required over 1750’ of Acrylic heat tape and 1075 electrical terminations. Clayborn Lab was able to meet the project’s unique design requirements and delivered all the heaters in an efficient and well-organized manner.
Several years ago an emerging company was interested in taking the idea of an electric blanket to the next level. The concept was born from the need on the jobsite to be able to cure concrete in lower ambient temperatures than had previously been possible using conventional methods. Clayborn was contacted to initially supply a range of custom heaters, complete with a messenger (buss) wire circuit and 3-prong plug. Several years and hundreds of innovations later, Clayborn now supplies the company with very large volumes of raw heat tape at differing lengths and watt densities, manufacturing as much as 1,000,000 feet of tape per year for this single customer.
Clayborn Lab has served all sorts of unique applications, including temperature maintenance. A food transportation company came to Clayborn to address a problem with liquid chocolate solidifying at the outlet of some of their food-grade transportation trailers. Clayborn was able to develop 8’ custom heaters to wrap the last few inches of 4” OD pipe. The heaters included a self-regulating thermostatic control and operated at 12 – 13.5 volts DC (standard automobile voltage). The resulting heat meant that the chocolate would no longer solidify and the thermostatic control allowed for a plug-n-play solution without the need for expensive and complicated control equipment.
A school of Pharmacology at one of the leading Universities of Medicine in the United States first approached Clayborn with an application in which small portions of tubing needed to be heat-traced, with some of the tubing length inside a vacuum. Our engineers were able to work with this client to provide a custom solution as the application needed a high watt density, multiple lengths of tape to wrap discontinuous tubing lengths and the ability to replace the heat trace over time. The school has since counted on Clayborn to produce other laboratory type Heated Sample Lines and provide Acrylic heat tape rolls for further experimentation inside vacuum chambers.
An organization within the United States Department of Agriculture approached Clayborn with an application that required remote operation of low voltage heated sample lines. The lines were designed to sample water turbidity at peak flows in order to better understand the overall degree of turbidity and its effects on water quality. The entire system would be set-up and left for months at a time, with technicians returning during weather permitting circumstances. Clayborn’s energy-efficient, low-impact lines allowed the organization to take numerous samples in cold climates at any time throughout the year, all while using limited battery power.
Clayborn Lab has received requests from hundreds of various laboratories as our heat tape is an extremely low-profile heat tracing solution. One such customer employed Clayborn to build an unusual form of heat tape. This tape was different in the fact that the aluminum thermal reflective layer was manufactured on both sides of the heating elements (one-side is standard), effectively eliminating the adhesive side of the tape. The heat tape was then sent to the customer and sewn into thermal insulating material. The customer used these “electric blankets” to keep contents of high-pressure tanks at temperatures that were suitable for use in their application.
A medical research firm contacted Clayborn in need of a very small heater system for temperature maintenance purposes. The desire was to keep the contents of hypodermic needles at an elevated temperature so that when the contents were injected into a specimen the results would remain accurate and un-skewed. Clayborn was able to deliver a custom heater which was installed onto a hypodermic needle “holster”. The setup produced adequate heat while still allowing for easy access of the needle during experimentation. The company also needed to ensure that the substance within the needle would not be overheated, which Clayborn was able to deliver using custom resistance heating wire elements.