neilestrick

If you're looking for something that can spin for a long time, get a Shimpo. But if you just need something that rotates smoothly, THESE work really well, for 1/3 the cost of a Shimpo. I've got both in my studio, and I have no complaints with either.

I thought it was a plastic coating over metal? Probably not a good way to glue it on. I'd either peel all of it off or get a new wheel head.

My wheel and primary work table are set for standing. Occasionally I will sit on a tall stool while decorating, but for the most part I do everything while standing. Back when I set up my wheel for standing I realized just how much of my energy was going into getting up and down from a seated position. Working in a standing position I can move about more and take advantage of a larger work area instead of always moving things into and out of a small seated work area.

A flaking lid is definitely a problem, but replacing it with a brick lid is not a cheap fix. A new lid slab plus shipping will cost $300-500 depending on the size. Or if the floor is the same material and in better condition then you can swap them. They also make products that stabilize and harden fiber that may help. Is the lid still structurally sound? Unless the lid has degraded considerably, I wouldn't think it would be the cause of the kiln not getting to temp. The other issue with flaking fiber is that you're breathing those fibers every time you move the lid, and that's not good for your lungs. You can make your own lid slab, but unless you've got some experience mortaring insulating firebrick it may not go well and you'll waste a lot of time and money. New IFB run $4-6 each. Cutting the slab to size and shape is a big mess, lots of dust. The other issue is that the hinge on the kiln is probably not made to support the weight of a brick slab, so you'll need a new hinge system, which would have to come from another brand. You'll also need an outer band for the slab. All in you probably won't save much over getting a new one. If you can find a junker kiln locally that someone is selling cheap, you can use the slab and hinge from it. Honestly, sometimes kilns just need to be tossed out.

Standard #365 cone 6 porcelain.

There's definitely something to this. The semi-rigid ducting acts a bit like a sounding board. I use rubber duct, Blo-R-Vac Flexible Duct Hose from McMaster-Carr, and it's definitely quieter than the metal stuff. It's rated to 250F and doesn't corrode. I run both of my kiln vent during classes and they aren't overbearing. You can hear them, but they're no worse than the fans we run to keep us cool during the summer.

Mine is about 30 degrees off at cone 6, about 10 degrees at cone 04. No voltage issues, plenty of power. I've had several customers in the past 6 months experience the same thing. I think it's just a difference with the programming in the controller. I even used my old TC blocks just to see if that made a difference, since they have a different terminal material. @Pres If you plan to do your own program anyway, just run a firing with cones you can see, and shut the kiln down manually when the cones drop and use that temp as the peak for your firings. That's what I do for my glaze firings.

The holes won't affect the firing.

The can handle two kilns, so yes on one kiln they are starved. They work, though. Thousands of these out there functioning as intended...

If the existing motor is swapped for a inline fan with similar CFM but the rest of the system is used as-is, no further modifications would be necessary since the mixing is done at the collection cup under the kiln.

If you get an inline fan, get one rated for the same draw, around 140CFM.

That sounds normal to me. It's just a simple squirrel cage blower, so not the most advanced blower technology. When they go bad the bearings wear out and they make a lot more noise than that. I couldn't hear it in the video, but if you're getting any additional noise from vibrations in the wall, you could put it on the floor on a piece of foam to isolate it more.

Link isn't working for me.

It definitely makes some sound, but you should still be able to have a conversation while next to it. It's possible you got a bad one. Can you post a short video so we can hear it?

You won't get all the elements glowing unless it's on high. Get yourself an inexpensive digital pyrometer and a heavy duty (8 gauge) type K thermocouple from Amazon and stick it in the spy hole to track temperature rise.

Yes, kilns smell when they've sat for a long time. Make sure the control boxes don't have dust and crud and spiderwebs and moues poop in them from sitting. Periodically feel the power cord and plug and make sure they're not heating up too much during the firing. Slightly warm is normal.

Many kiln companies use 50 amp power cords on their kilns because that is the largest size cord that is used on kilns, and they only want to stock one size of power cord. Being larger than is needed isn't a big deal. Electrical code requires that kilns are on a breaker that is 25% greater than the actual amperage draw of the kiln. So you 24 amp kiln should be on a 30 amp breaker. The 6 gauge wire that was run may or may not fit in a 30 amp breaker, though. If it won't fit, code also says that it can be a breaker that is up to 50% greater, so it could be on a 40 amp breaker and still be up to code, and that should fit the 6 gauge wire no problem. As long as the power cord, plug, and outlet are are rated for at least the size of the breaker then you're safe. It's all about the amperage. Your cord has wires that can handle 50 amps. The 6 gauge wire in the wall can handle 60 amps. You just need a breaker that is the correct size for the kiln (30 amp ideally, 40 if the wires won't fit), and a plug and outlet that are rated for at least as much as the breaker. Your electrician probably looked at the Kiln Sitter instead of the serial plate. Sitters are rated for up to 50 amps, so they say '50 amps' on them, but that has nothing to do with the actual amperage draw of the kiln. The kiln is is beautiful condition. Blue Diamond made nice kilns. If you need elements, go to Euclids.com

Skutt does the graded elements to compensate for the fact that most of their kilns are single zone, and the controller doesn't know what's happening in the top and bottom sections of the kiln. It's not nearly as precise at keeping things even as zone control, though, so you still have to be careful how you load the kiln. If you run zone control with graded elements, the top and bottom sections won't have to work as hard as with equal elements since they're running hotter. The total power consumption would probably be about the same, since the total wattage is the same with either setup. It's hard to estimate just how much of a difference it would make. I think it would take a real world test to find out. My gut says it would be more like 75% instead of 85%. I think to get them all to run totally even, you'd have to have a drastic power difference between the middle and the other sections. The Skutt 1231PK runs 3 different elements. I think some of the older Cress kilns do that, too, even on 27" tall kilns. L&L has always run equal elements because it greatly simplifies everything when it comes to elements. No worries about getting the wrong elements in the wrong place, etc. And as a repair person the math is easier if you need to calculate element resistance on the fly. TBH, I haven't noticed the middle section elements wearing that much differently than the top and bottom on my L&L kilns, and I've always gotten about 150 firings between element changes, so it's not really a big deal. I think that just being in the heat degrades the elements a lot, even if they're not working hard to create the heat.

You can still fire by color if you want to. Set it to cone 7 medium speed, then manually turn it off when it hits the color you want.

Feels weird to self-quote, but this made me think of a phenomenon we see in wood burning kilns and sometimes in gas salt kilns, too- kilns that have hard brick interiors. There's often a point at which the kilns stall out, where the mass of the bricks are sucking up all the energy. Then, once the bricks become saturated with heat they start radiating and the kiln climbs easily. In grad school we had a shino kiln that had 18" thick walls- 9" of hard brick interior and 9" of soft brick exterior. The idea was that you'd fire really slow, like over two or three days days so the hard bricks got super saturated with heat, and then it takes days for the kiln to cool, which gives great color in shino glazes. Anyway, my fried was firing the kiln and had it climbing really slowly. After a day or two the kiln was at about cone 6 and should have continued for another full day at that rate of climb, and needed turning up a couple more times. So he went home and went to bed that night and in the morning the kiln had flattened cone 11. We figure it got to cone 14 or higher. The bricks had become saturated and the kiln rocketed up. Anyway, this just popped into my head when I was looking at my firing reports.

The SSR's are really good at keeping it even. In looking at my last few firings, the temp difference between the 3 sections during the final slow rap is never more than 2F degrees. During the faster ramp it's mostly even, but in every firing there's a couple hundred degrees at some point where the spread gets to 10F degrees. It's interesting to see how that varies from firing to firing. Sometimes it goes uneven at 1600F, sometimes at 1900F. It's clear that how each batch is loaded affects what happens during the ramps. I was also surprised that during the final 108F/hr ramp the relay % doesn't vary much over the 200 degrees. It's only 2-4% difference. I would have thought it would be working a lot harder at the peak. 200 degrees is a big climb, after all. I suppose that during the slow ramp the bricks and ware are much closer to the air temp, so they're not just sucking up every bit of energy the elements put out and the elements don't have to work nearly as hard to make gains in temperature despite it getting hotter. I've also seen in several firings that the top section is clearly dealing with heat loss out the lid during the final ramp, as it tends to increase more than the bottom and middle by the end of the ramp. It's fun to geek out on a spread sheet!

It's always time to get the banjo out.

It's not that fast at the final ramp. I explained that poorly, and have corrected it. It can keep up with 350F/hr to about 2050F, but then it starts to lag a little bit. It can keep up 300F/hr up to 2100F, though. That I've tested. When I fire I ramp at 300F/hr to 2030F, then I ramp at 108F/hr to 2230F. At the peak of my last firing, which was a pretty full load, it was running 93% top, 47% middle, 90% bottom. So there's definitely room for more speed but not 350F/hr. I bet it could run 150-200F/hr at the peak. BTW, it's an L&L eQ2827-3, 14950 watts, 41.5 amps on 208V 3P service, solid state relays. One of the cool things about the SSR's is if you get really close to the kiln you can hear the elements buzz in a pulsing rhythm as the relays cycle twice per second. It's like a faint drum beat.

I have found that my kiln can go 350F/hr to about 2050F. It's not because of a lack of power, but rather because for it to go faster than that the middle section will have to run farther ahead of the top and bottom sections than the controller will allow it to. At 2000F and a rate of 350F/hr, the bottom section will be on 100%, the top at about 97%, and the middle at about 45%, and the three sections will be dead even in temp. For the firing to increase in speed, the middle is the only section that can speed up, which would put it ahead of the other sections. The heat from the middle would help push the top and bottom faster, but the middle would also get ahead of the other sections. Personally, I don't think it's a problem for the middle to jump ahead by 30 degrees if you're then slowing down to 108F/hr for the last 200 degrees, because there would be plenty of time for the sections to even out at that point. 350F/hr is plenty fast, so it's not really a problem in terms of the results. That said, it would be nice for the middle section to take some of the work from the other sections so that the elements wear more evenly.

I thought they had a flyer in there?