Product Overview
A CSZ drive-in chamber is built around a full vehicle — you drive the article in, from a small car to a full semi-truck, or a quarter-buck to full-buck assembly. It runs combined environmental testing: temperature and humidity together with solar simulation, infrared lighting, altitude, freezing rain, and vibration via a four-post road simulator with dynamometers for NVH and squeak-and-rattle work. Built modular or fully welded and engineered to your platforms and instrumentation, drive-ins scale from 200 to 8,000 cu ft and far larger as projects. Choose a drive-in when the article is a vehicle; for racked or carted loads, see the walk-in.
Other CSZ chamber families
Walk-In Chambers — modular & welded rooms, racked and carted loads
AGREE Temp/Humidity/Vibration — combined environments with a shaker
Altitude Chambers — low pressure plus temperature
Battery Test Chambers — temp/humidity with thermal-runaway safety
Specialty & Custom — built-to-spec and unusual-environment chambers
Key Features & Benefits
- Built by the largest environmental-simulation manufacturer — Cincinnati Sub-Zero is a brand of Weiss Technik — over 80 years of environmental-simulation experience behind every chamber, from a benchtop reach-in to a full drive-in. The chamber is a reference platform, not a one-off.
- Configured to the test, not sold off a shelf — temperature range, refrigeration tier, humidity, size, controls, and combined environments are each specified to your standard and article, so you buy the capability the test needs and not a wider, costlier envelope. You pay for the cold you use, not the cold on the spec sheet.
- Fully welded, vapor-tight, built to last — fully welded ports and seams, double gasketing, and stainless interiors keep the workspace sealed against the leaks that wreck uniformity and shorten chamber life. The chamber outlasts several generations of the products tested in it.
- One touchscreen controller, remote access built in — the EZT touchscreen stores multi-step profiles, logs data with an audit trail, and sends email and text alarms — reachable from any device on the network with no extra software. Run, monitor, and pull data from your desk or your phone.
- A single source for the whole test floor — because the same controls, software, and engineering span reach-in, walk-in, drive-in, and custom builds, one CSZ relationship covers a lab that grows from a benchtop to a vehicle chamber. The chamber you add next speaks the same language as the one you have.
Specifications
- Chamber type
- Drive-in chamber sized around the vehicle bay — designed for combined environmental testing from an automotive sub-system assembly up to a full vehicle, from small cars to full semi-trucks.
- Workspace volume / size class
- 200 to 8,000 cu ft standard, with project-scale installations far larger — one CSZ semi-truck drive-in was 33,750 cu ft (48′W×65′D×27′H) with six modular plenums, six 30–30 cascade systems, and six remote air-cooled condensers totaling 24,000 cfm. Each chamber is tailor-designed to the article and instrumentation.
- Cabinet / construction
- Built as an insulated modular panelized system or as fully welded construction, selected to match the performance envelope and site. Tailored to the customer’s vehicle platforms, from quarter-buck to full-buck assemblies.
- Access & loading
- Drive-in entry sized to the vehicle; entry ramp, oversize / automatic doors, reinforced treaded floor, and custom fixtures for the platform under test.
- Temperature range
- Low end by refrigeration tier: single-stage −34°C, Tundra® −45°C, Tundra® II −50°C, cascade −68°C; high temperature to +190°C on welded construction.
- Humidity range
- 10% to 95% RH for diurnal and climate-cycle simulation.
- Refrigeration system / tier
- Tiered refrigeration — single-stage, Tundra®, Tundra® II, and cascade — scaled with multiple modular plenums and remote air-cooled condensers to condition the large volume; LN2 / CO2 boost optional for faster transitions.
- Uniformity & control tolerance
- High-cfm plenum conditioning circulates conditioned air through the vehicle bay for uniform temperature and humidity around the article; capacity is engineered to the chamber volume.
- Controller
- EZT-570S programmable touchscreen with multi-step profiling, data logging, audit trail, and email/text alarms; remote instrument consoles for the test bay.
- Electrical
- Sized to the multi-plenum refrigeration and heater load (three-phase); high/low-pressure switches on the refrigeration systems; explosion-proof electrical available.
- Options & accessories
- Four-post road simulator with dynamometers, solar / infrared / freezing-rain / vibration / altitude integration, remote refrigeration, custom fixtures, automatic doors, entry ramp, reinforced floor, and remote instrument consoles.
- Combined environments
- Designed for combined environments: solar simulation, infrared lighting, vibration (via a four-post road simulator and dynamometers), altitude, and freezing-rain simulation — for NVH, squeak-and-rattle, suspension-loading, and full diurnal road-condition testing.
- Build & lead time
- Fully custom-engineered to the vehicle platform, test articles, and instrumentation integration; quote-only (no published price list). A drive-in is a project build with a meaningful lead time.
Common Applications
- Full-vehicle climate testing — small cars to full semi-trucks
- Automotive sub-system, component, and instrument-panel qualification
- NVH, squeak-and-rattle, and suspension-loading on a four-post road simulator
- Diurnal cycling with solar and infrared lighting simulation
- Combined temperature / humidity / altitude / vibration vehicle testing
Fit guide: choose a drive-in when the test article is a full vehicle or large platform that must be driven or rolled in, especially for road simulation. For racked or carted loads, see the walk-in chambers; for hand-loaded articles, the Z-Plus reach-in.
Design & Selection Considerations
- Size the load to about a third of the workspace — the chamber conditions the air, and the air has to reach every surface — a load packed wall-to-wall starves the airflow and breaks uniformity. A common guideline is to keep the test article (plus fixturing and cabling) under roughly a third of the workspace volume. Oversize wastes energy and slows ramps; undersize crowds the airflow.
- Specify the cold you actually need — each tier down costs more — reaching deeper cold is the single biggest cost and energy driver. Single-stage covers most ambient-band work; Tundra, Tundra II, and cascade buy progressively colder lows; LN2 boost buys the deepest cold and the fastest ramps. Match the refrigeration tier to the standard’s required extreme, not to the widest range available. Do not buy −70°C to run a −20°C test.
- Match the ramp rate to the thermal mass — a heavy or powered load slows the temperature change the chamber can deliver and may demand a larger refrigeration package and extra-heat option to hit your transition times. A live load (a powered DUT) dissipates heat the chamber has to remove on top of everything else. Use the input form to give us the article weight and powered heat load so the ramp spec is real, not nominal.
- Confirm the article — and the chamber — fit the site — check the doorway and ceiling clearance to get the chamber in, the floor loading for a heavy or loaded chamber, and the access to load the article (a reach-in door versus a walk-in entry versus a drive-in ramp). A heavy battery pack or vehicle assembly can exceed a standard reach-in and points to a reinforced-floor or walk-in build. Plan the site before the chamber arrives.
- Plan utilities and condensate up front — size the electrical service to the refrigeration and heater load (often three-phase), provide cooling water or airflow for the condenser, a floor drain for humidity condensate, and — where LN2 or CO2 boost is used — a bulk supply with safe venting and oxygen monitoring for personnel. The chamber is only as good as the services feeding it.
- Pick the humidity and dew-point range deliberately — a humidity system adds and removes moisture down to a low-RH floor; marginal dew-point control near the cold limit can call for a dry-air purge or GN2 to prevent condensation and frost flash. Only the humidity builds carry the water system, demineralizer, and drain. Specify the RH band the test needs — a temperature-only build skips the whole water system.
To configure the right CSZ drive-in chamber:
Use the input form to send the test standard you are working to, the article size and weight, the temperature and humidity range, any combined environments (vibration, altitude, light), and the controller, software, and documentation you need. We size the chamber, refrigeration tier, and controls to the application and return a configured quote.
Environmental Test Application Sheet ›Talk to an engineer directly — Scott Prater, Principal · 917-580-0878 · scott@pratertechnical.com
Specifications compiled by Prater Technical Partners from Cincinnati Sub-Zero published product specifications.