Frankenkiln help

[Mathew Jinks]

Hi There, This is my first posting so thanks for any responses I get, I have read many posts in this forum and members have helped with other weird kiln questions so here goes;

I recently purchased a vintage manual fire Skutt 1227 240v/45amp single phase, much of the brick had been replaced along with all new elements, the previous owners had fired well up to cone 10.

I am installing the kiln in my garage with 240v.

With the kiln they gave me a free Jenken Orton 3000 digital controller panel from a 3 ring kiln, with the idea that it may work with the Skutt, they had not tried it however. The Jenken panel has 208v 48amps marked on the front which tells me it is a 3 phase controller, but on the inside it is written 'rebuilt 2011' and it looks to me like it has been rewired for single phase since it now has 2 hot wires and one earth and the relays look ready to be wired in series to the elements. Please see the attached pictures. You can see also how I am starting  to wire it up to the Skutt. My questions are does this look right and do you think I have made correct assumptions re the rebuild meaning the panel was probably wired for single phase 240v household use back in 2011 but it was originally 208v 3 phase. As a side note the thermocouple was corroded so I replaced it and all connections look good, the PCB on the Orton 3000 looks healthy as well. The kiln was originally purchased by the previous owners with this Jenken panel thrown in and it has now been passed down to me and I would love for it to work. I contacted Jenken but they did not respond.

Thanks for your input.

 

Mathew.

 

 

[neilestrick]

Just because it was 208V doesn't mean it was 3 phase. Kilns can be single or 3 phase regardless of the voltage. The control box doesn't care what the voltage was, only the phase matters to it. The elements are where the voltage difference comes into play.

The previous owners never fired that kiln to cone 10, because at 240 V single phase it's only a cone 8 kiln. 

From what I can tell, everything looks good. Make sure you've got it on a 60 amp breaker. Start it up and check the amperage on each section. You should be pulling about 48 amps total.

[Mathew Jinks]

Hi Neil, Thanks for the reply, that's what I thought about the Skutt, that it was a cone 8 kiln but they show'd me the cone from the firing and indeed it was a 10 bent over almost all the way! it has 3" firebrick.

I used a 25' spool of 6/2 and a 60 amp breaker in the house plus a breaker in the garage and am planning to hard wire it in to the box, my landlady wants a Sparky to look it over though because of home insurance. I may just bring it to life and see if it is alive first  before running.

Thanks again.

 

[High Bridge Pottery]

Something seems odd about how the elements are wired up, hard to tell from the picture but why does each relay connect to the bottom connectors in each section? Looking at the wiring diagram it's 3 parallel relays with each element section wired up in series. 

https://www.ortonceramic.com/files/2676/File/af3000-wiring-diagram.pdf

If you want 48 amps at 240v then doesn't that mean each section is 15 ohm resistance total, not sure how it is wired up now.

Thinking about it maybe they are in parallel and each element is 30 ohm and not 15 ohm in series.

 

[neilestrick]

9 hours ago, High Bridge Pottery said:

Something seems odd about how the elements are wired up, hard to tell from the picture but why does each relay connect to the bottom connectors in each section? Looking at the wiring diagram it's 3 parallel relays with each element section wired up in series. 

https://www.ortonceramic.com/files/2676/File/af3000-wiring-diagram.pdf

If you want 48 amps at 240v then doesn't that mean each section is 15 ohm resistance total, not sure how it is wired up now.

Thinking about it maybe they are in parallel and each element is 30 ohm and not 15 ohm in series.

 

His pics show them wired in parallel. It doesn't matter if the feeder wire from the relay goes to the bottom element or the top element of each pair. That wiring diagram is for the controller setup, and doesn't show how the elements themselves are wired up. The controller wiring is the same regardless of whether the elements are wired in series or parallel. 

[Mathew Jinks]

On 12/9/2017 at 11:34 AM, Rockhopper said:

Just curious... did you wind up getting Sparky to check out your wiring, and did it pass ? 

Reason for asking:  I'm pretty sure  6/2 NM ("Romex") wire is only rated for 55 amps max.  I don't think I've ever seen a 55-amp breaker, so maybe they allow the 60.  I'm not an electrician, and it's been a while since I looked at a code-book, but when I was managing the electrical dept at a local home center, both the wire supplier and the breaker manufacturers told us allowable breaker sizes for 'Romex' are 14ga=15amp, 12ga=20amp, 10ga=30amp, 8ga=40amp & 6ga=50amp.

Mostly bringing this up because - since you don't own the property - if you didn't have it inspected, and something goes wrong, you could wind up being held liable for any damage to the property if it wasn't done 100% according to code.  (Even if the land-lady is OK with it, her insurance company would likely say otherwise.)

Sparky is taking his time to come and give an approval but he's local and cheap   I checked the Skutt website and it specs 6\2 wire for the 1227 which is 48 amps and with a 25% overhead that should be a 60amp breaker regardless of wire, it's only a 25ft run so dropping to a 4/2 wire seems like overkill, this sparky has installed some kilns so I'll let you know when he turns up.

Thanks everyone for their input.

 

m.

 

[Mathew Jinks]

Hi All, Thanks for all your input on this topic, I wanted to let you all know the outcome so others can read the success story here. The electrician came and checked the wiring, it was $60 for an inspection the materials cost about $60 to install- 25 ft of 6/2 Romex, 60amp breaker and a D breaker box in the garage hard wired to the kiln. He said the wiring was perfect and all tested good, he made sure my connections were all tight and that the D box was not higher than 6 feet for access and all was great, he signed off and gave me a report for the insurance company. 

As for the Jen-Ken kiln AutoFire 3000....it works great! and is firing to cone 06 now, I have ordered a couple more thermocouples to have multi zone control across the kiln, I couldn't be happier and a great cheap upgrade to a manual kiln, the AutoFire 3000 has jumpers for servo control of a vent fan and that will be the next project.

The whole install was pretty simple, the key for us was that our house only has 100amp max fed to it but all our major appliances are gas so putting a kiln in was simple, if we had an electric range and dryer or hot tub in the back yard it would have been a different story.

P.S I also purchased a dry fire extinguisher just in case  which is always good to have in the studio.

m.

 

[neilestrick]

YES!