If your peak current is limited to 2 A, and if 2 A produces 40 W of thermal power in a pixel, and if you are limiting yourself to a maximum of three elements on at any one time, then the maximum average power you can deliver to any given element is going to be right at 1 W (without playing games in which you put more power into one pixel at the extreme expense of other pixels). Even doing this, the most you could do would be to deliver 40 W to three pixels and no power at all to the remaining 118.

Is that sufficient for your needs?

If not, then there's no need chasing this rabbit any further and it's time to find a new rabbit.

I think it should be, the element cools at a rate of 100Hz. That is why i calculated the slowest refresh rate (Time before the cycle will restart if all 121 elements are activated) which is 4800Hz. My hope is that I can take advantage of the Hysteresis and get to temp after a period of time. Not quite sure where you got the 1W from maybe you could explain that a bit more.

So that is a 5us period that happens at 4.8khz cascading down my I/O.

 

I think it should be, the element cools at a rate of 100Hz. That is why i calculated the slowest refresh rate (Time before the cycle will restart if all 121 elements are activated) which is 4800Hz. My hope is that I can take advantage of the Hysteresis and get to temp after a period of time.

Not sure what it means for something to cool at a rate of 100 Hz. Could you explain exactly what you mean by that?

Not quite sure where you got the 1W from maybe you could explain that a bit more.

You can get at it a number of ways. If you are heating three elements at any given moment in time, with 40 W into each of those elements, then you are producing 120 W of heat total. That is spread out, somehow, across 121 elements, which is an average of just under 1 W per element.

Another way is to focus on one element. There are 121 time slots and in each time slot, at most three elements get power. When they get power, they get 40 W (since you say that they can't take more than 2 A of peak current and 2 A of steady current equated to 40 W). So, if each element gets 40 W for 3 time slots and 0 W for 118 time slots, the average is

Pavg = (40 W)(3 on-slots)/(121 slots) + (0 W)(118 off-slots)/(121 slots) = 120/121 W

 

I recall one previous instance of some version of AI created a BOM for an individual asking it to create a project.
IF it were not so useless it would be funny, understanding how stupid AI and the programmer's logic must be.
It is rather offensive when that auto-correct assumes "you must mean this" when the meaning is so very far off.
(Not wanting to hijack this thread, sorry folks.)

 

Not sure what it means for something to cool at a rate of 100 Hz. Could you explain exactly what you mean by that?



You can get at it a number of ways. If you are heating three elements at any given moment in time, with 40 W into each of those elements, then you are producing 120 W of heat total. That is spread out, somehow, across 121 elements, which is an average of just under 1 W per element.

Another way is to focus on one element. There are 121 time slots and in each time slot, at most three elements get power. When they get power, they get 40 W (since you say that they can't take more than 2 A of peak current and 2 A of steady current equated to 40 W). So, if each element gets 40 W for 3 time slots and 0 W for 118 time slots, the average is

Pavg = (40 W)(3 on-slots)/(121 slots) + (0 W)(118 off-slots)/(121 slots) = 120/121 W

The material heats up and cools in 1/100 of a second, so my thought is that if I can get back around to turn the element on again before that time it will keep heating up.

actually If I could get a row of 11 to refresh everytime the peak power is 40W*11 = 440W

That would increase my refresh time (need to calculate)

at some point im going to need to pull the trigger on this (scared it wont work. But that's no reason to stop now)

[That is the idea]

 

The material heats up and cools in 1/100 of a second, so my thought is that if I can get back around to turn the element on again before that time it will keep heating up.

actually If I could get a row of 11 to refresh everytime the peak power is 40W*11 = 440W

That would increase my refresh time (need to calculate)

at some point im going to need to pull the trigger on this (scared it wont work. But that's no reason to stop now)

[That is the idea]

Actually, realizing a concept will not work is a VERY GOOD REASON to back off and consider an alternate approach. But it does require experience and a lot of learning to be able to see what the problem is. So it is not the same as giving up because the job is too hard. It is understanding what the actual problem is. And not going broke by building products that do not work. (Been down that road once.) (I learned a lot)