- Joined
- May 7, 2014
- Messages
- 776
Hi gang, So the 1,000 mile trip w/ the Son to PA for a muffle furnace turned out OK... Mostly. The unit came back and we found 3 bad elements. Sort of expected 1 or 2... But 3. Man. I happen to have 1 good element from another furnace given to me last summer.
We R&R'd the setup to run w/ 2 elements. A good Top and a Bottom are running and we hit 960F after about 30mins tonight when I shut it down. It required a bit of rework to run w/ just two. We had to put the top and bottom elements in Series for a 22Ohm setup. Putting in parallel hits 5Ohms and would simply be too much current. I wanted to hit about 24amps (it's design) but to do that I'll need a few more elements. Grrrrr.
The side elements are $380 apiece. Yikes. Top and bottom only 304?
Check out the grand controller on this beast! The temp meter movement is backwards?? Need to figure that one out.
After some clean up and a few wire hookup repairs the unit is operational. The controller even has a TUBE inside. My son had never seen one. LOL. WOW. I told him to google "PID temperature controller" and notice how small they are and he needs a programmable one to replace this beast of a sidecar tin-can controller. But it's cool to see it all running for sure.
A nice feeling to a crappy week.
If anyone has experience making their coils- I'd appreciate a shout out. We can make them but they are electrically charged. So putting them in w/o the ceramic mold just seems hard to me. We wanted to find some type of quick conductive clay or ceramic to mold a element set into??? (yet another project!).
Anyone have a few EL9x1 or EL9x2 elements I'm interested. ;-)
Gnite everyone, CG
We R&R'd the setup to run w/ 2 elements. A good Top and a Bottom are running and we hit 960F after about 30mins tonight when I shut it down. It required a bit of rework to run w/ just two. We had to put the top and bottom elements in Series for a 22Ohm setup. Putting in parallel hits 5Ohms and would simply be too much current. I wanted to hit about 24amps (it's design) but to do that I'll need a few more elements. Grrrrr.
The side elements are $380 apiece. Yikes. Top and bottom only 304?
Check out the grand controller on this beast! The temp meter movement is backwards?? Need to figure that one out.
After some clean up and a few wire hookup repairs the unit is operational. The controller even has a TUBE inside. My son had never seen one. LOL. WOW. I told him to google "PID temperature controller" and notice how small they are and he needs a programmable one to replace this beast of a sidecar tin-can controller. But it's cool to see it all running for sure.
A nice feeling to a crappy week. If anyone has experience making their coils- I'd appreciate a shout out. We can make them but they are electrically charged. So putting them in w/o the ceramic mold just seems hard to me. We wanted to find some type of quick conductive clay or ceramic to mold a element set into??? (yet another project!).
Anyone have a few EL9x1 or EL9x2 elements I'm interested. ;-)
Gnite everyone, CG