All About Tuning Forks: Their Uses and Advantages

Get Informed About Tuning Fork Crystals and Why They’re Preferred by Engineers

Nearly everyone has at least a few common household items that resonate and create a frequency when struck. If you have ever tapped your fork on the side of a wine glass to make a speech, you have created a frequency on a resonating surface.

When that surface is a quartz crystal manufactured to a certain size, you can generate a very specific frequency that is well known to engineers in the design community: 32.768 kHz. This is the frequency of a tuning fork watch crystal, simply known as a tuning fork.

A tuning fork is a device that creates a frequency of 32.768 kHz. This frequency is easily divisible to measure a one-second pulse or wave. Because of this easy mathematical calculation, tuning forks are used in products that display date and time.

Therefore, tuning fork crystals used in an oscillator bring timing solutions to the human level because this frequency can be measured by our universal understanding of time. While all crystal oscillators can make specific functions happen at a given time, if an application requires the user to understand that time, a tuning fork crystal provides the required precision.

How Tuning Fork Crystals Are Used

A frequency of 1 Hz is the exact equivalent to a one-second pulse or wave. However, a 1 Hz crystal would have to be very large, rendering this crystal unsuitable for small, effective electronic devices like the now-iconic quartz wristwatch. Therefore, in any application that requires a crystal with a small package size and a human interface, a tuning fork crystal provides high precision for engineers.

Tuning fork watch crystals are found in many electronic products by which we track time. However, this is not limited to clock displays used in wearables and IoT devices. Consider the following use cases for tuning fork crystals when used in an oscillator:

• A display that tells us when a document was created, downloaded, saved or printed, as well as other common personal computer functions.
• A building management system (BMS) that records important events as they happen at a facility, so that facility managers can analyze time-dependent data, such as how much electricity is used in a 24-hour period.
• An electronic device that allows the user to program functions for a certain time, so that events occur when desired. For example, automated HVAC functions in an office building use tuning fork crystals to preserve energy during off hours.

Advantages of Tuning Fork Crystals

It is important to note that in each of the use cases described above, the tuning fork crystal used in a timing solution’s circuit board could be exceptionally small. This proves advantageous for engineers who design electronics because efficient, smaller, less cost-prohibitive components can make the difference between winning a contract or being passed over for another engineer’s product.

Tuning fork crystals also provide a stable frequency under a wide range of temperature conditions. Tuning fork crystals used in oscillators will experience minimal drift of temperature ranges required for their typical use cases (e.g., office buildings and homes). If temperate compensation is required, a leading crystal oscillator manufacturer can include a temperature compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) with a 32.768 crystal on a circuit board to control frequency drift.

Generally speaking, quartz crystal oscillators used for timing solutions provide a high level of accuracy and reliability at an affordable price. Further, when tuning fork crystal oscillators – or any quartz crystal components for that matter – are used in a vehicle, they are ruggedized to ensure durability and effectiveness under a wide variety of conditions that automobiles experience.

Where to Find Tuning Fork Crystals

Tuning fork watch crystals are readily available, once you have found the right manufacturer of quartz crystal components. Ensuring your team is working with a leading manufacturer is not a matter of preference, as there are counterfeit manufacturers that should be avoided because of the inferiority of their products. Engineers should consider these measurable characteristics when searching for tuning fork crystals at a frequency of 32.768, TCXO crystal oscillators and any other frequency-control solution:

• The components you need should come from a network of authorized distributors to ensure that the product was built by a leading manufacturer.
• The manufacturer should have a readily available archive of resources and tools – including a parametric search function – to provide the information you need to decide on the right product for your application.
• A manufacturer that provides comprehensive engineering support is a trustworthy choice, as they offer this service to help you implement their components effectively and maximize your success in the marketplace.
• Look for a manufacturer with multiple decades of experience. This indicator allows you to conclude that this business has succeeded – and continues to succeed – as a trusted manufacturer in the engineering community.

Learn more about how to select tuning fork crystals for your oscillators from a leading manufacturer of quartz crystal components.