Hi, I would like to know if anybody has experienced cooling problems with the ST-8300M camera. I have asked this query before and the only answer I got advised me to contact Bill Lynch at SBIG which I did but unfortunately he could not offer any solution to my problem. The problem is I live 11 degrees south of the equator and have high ambient temperatures at all times. A cold winters night is +15C. I cannot get the camera below -5C and I would like to get it below -10C. I carried out a series of tests on the camera and came to the conclusion it is operating OK. . With the camera at an ambient temperature of 25C and the set point at -15 the temperature went down to -3.16C a Delta T of 28.16C. As the camera warmed up so the CCD temp rose slightly. With the camera body at 42C the CCD was -1.16C. at all times the power showed 100% and 5.8 to 5.9 volts on the TEC. I have concluded the camera needs more cooling capacity. some ways of achieving this are. 1. Increase the amount of cooling air over the heat sink. 2. Add another TEC. 3. Use a liquid cooled heat exchanger. Item 1. is the simpler solution but may not work. Items 2. and 3. will require some machining to be carried out. Has any other user confronted this problem and if so what solution did they use. I would appreciate any input from the forum on this. Alan Cairncross.
I have never had a problem cooling my ST-8300M 30C below ambient, that is usually the target I set, sounds like something is wrong with the camera. Have you taken the cover off to make sure the heat sink isn't obstructed with something? Is the fan running at full speed?
Joshua, I think the problem is that the camera does not have enough cooling capacity in high ambient temperature conditions. The camera does achieve a Delta/T of about -30C and this increases as the camera cools down. Most people do not understand how high the minimum temperature is when you are near the equator and at sea level even at night during the colder months of the year when average minimum temperatures are normally about +18c (+60.2F) so the camera starts cooling from a high ambient temp. I will have to increase the cooling capacity of the camera as I outlined above and I was hoping that somebody had done this so as I could get some pointers.
Alan, my camera has always been able to do -30C below ambient regardless of the temperature. One really hot summer we had 2 weeks straight of temps at 30c or above at sunset. I could only cool to 0C at the start of the night while first starting out, usually by the time I was ready to start an imaging run it had cooled enough that I could run at -5C for the rest of the night.
