Thermal management of CamPerform-Cyclone cameras

High-speed cameras are primarily designed to deliver the highest possible frame rates. Control and processing electronics of the image sensor are optimized to read out and transmit a maximum number of images per second from the sensor. High frame rates with massively parallel processing of image data contribute strongly and unavoidably to power consumption and thus to heating of sensor and electronics. This power must be dissipated to the environment via the camera housing.

– The design of the camera has to cope with conflicting requirements. –

On the one hand, the heating of the electronics must be limited to avoid thermal shutdown, image quality degradation and rapid aging. On the other hand, the camera housing should be small to allow flexibility for different applications, especially for machine vision. Forced air cooling would be very effective in solving these requirements, but is not compatible with vibration-sensitive applications or operation in dusty environments.
The CamPerform-Cyclone series of high-speed cameras are designed to solve these conflicting requirements by separating the electronics and camera cooling. Hot spots inside the camera are avoided by thermally connecting heat sources to the housing. This prevents critical components from heating up far beyond case temperature. Consequently, continuous operation of the camera at normal ambient temperatures is guaranteed without additional cooling. Nevertheless, the camera housing would become too hot at particularly high ambient temperatures.

– Flexible camera cooling concept allows a small camera housing without compromising operation at high ambient temperatures. –

Three solutions for camera cooling are supported by the camera housing design. All of them can be attached on each side of the camera and do not affect camera fixing in a relevnat way.