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[on:]

Hello,

I need to heat a wire and control the heat with Arduino. My setup is power supply ATX 12V has enough watt, I only need 30-40 watt or around 2.5 Amp. I'll be using two  temp sensors to get feedback but need to control the heat, I though about using a hobby ESC those for brushed dc motors as it runs with a regular servo pulses, but I dont know how well it will work.
How would you go about it?

I've read a digtial pot might be used but that it has some heat issues and I dont know enough about circuits to design one, or another way using a MOSFET but if I'm not mistaken the ESC (electric speed control) is built using MOSFET.

I'm curious about is it possible to control the current(amperage) sent to the wire. A PWM would be controlling the Volt although it would in theory have less heating issues then a resistance.

Thanks
Ekim

[Reply #1 on:]

I think an ESC will be unnecessarily complex for your application. I would suggest a simple motor driver capable of handling 2.5A (in practice...not just on paper). You can then control the heat by using PWM directly from the Arduino (use the analogWrite function).

Our Rugged Motor Driver will handle the job if you put both outputs in parallel. There are lots and lots of other "simple" step/direction motor drivers to choose from.

PWM doesn't actually control the volts, it controls the *average* current through the load (your heated wire) hence the average power, hence the heat.

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The Quick Shield: breakout all 28 pins to quick-connect terminals