Temperature controller

Yesterday I decided to stop trying to build a budget heater. For good thermal control I need temperature controllers that measure the actual temperature take action acoording to this and the set value. The way in wich the Reprap does this works good, at least that's what I understand from the stories I read from other users. For this project it would be too much work because the Fab@Home uses a totally different language and I'm not good at all with software. I hope to keep it this way...

For a mechanical engineer I still had to dig in deep in to electronics to find out how to control the temperature. In the end I found a very nice controller. The controller will work with the most common temp sensors like thermalcouples, ptc, ntc, pt100 and some. The ouput varies from a relay to some electronic signals. 

I also managed to make a power suply for a desktop computer suitable as a power suply for the heater. This involved some resistors and a switch because the suply won't work without load. Also it needs to be turned on, same as you turn on your computer. The package is completed by a MosFET between the heater and the powersuply to regulate the powerinput to the heater.

This is no rocketscience elektronics but for a mechanical engineer it's a bit of topic...