I am currently building a small high temperature heatsealer for fluoropolymer plastics like Teflon. I have used off the shelf controllers with thermocouple inputs and have even designed one (with the help of an electronics friend/genius) that is in use today in our business (using an 877 and picbasic pro).

I would like to do away with reading a thermocouple (too slow) and read the resistance of the ribbon directly with an A/D pin, go to a lookup table and display the temperature based on imperical data taken during the initial setup.

The ribbon is pulsed with current from an alternistor driven transformer. The transformer is only turned on a few milliseconds every eight miliseconds. While the current is off, I want to read the resistance of the ribbon.

I have maybe a four millisecond window at most to read this resistance and act on the A/D value. Timing is everything.

I do not have a good handle on how long it takes to convert analog to digital in a pic running at 20mhz using PicbasicPro. I've also seen mention of reading the pic directly for faster access.

Can someone tell me how fast the A/D channel works, and what issues you see in how I'd like to do this? It has been done before in a similar controller (Ropex) but they measure by current and voltage during an on-cycle. I just want to know what others might have tried and find out if this can be done.

Don't beat me up too badly... I'm mostly made up of crazy ideas... not a genious in the electronics department.

Many thanks!

Ross