Hello,
I have an older kiln with 3" Brick, and 4 side wall elements. It is a Cone 8 kiln. It has always seemed under powered to me when firing to cone 6, even with new elements. It had a kiln sitter (which I used to fire with), but I did a custom upgrade with a Bartlett Genesis Mini kiln controller and all necessary relays and wiring. The current specs of the kiln are as follows:
-Wired into a 240v / 30 amp circuit
-5760 Watt Kiln with 4x 40 ohm (I think, totaling 10 ohms when wired together) elements @ 24 amps max. The 4 elements are wired in parallel.
All the wiring in the kiln and custom kiln controller is rated for 30 amps. I am wondering if it would be possible to put in a higher powered element, while still maintaining the 30amp circuit. I was thinking something along the lines of:
-6240 Watts with 4x 37 ohm elements (9.25 when wired together) @ 26 amps max. This would still leave more than 10% head room on the 30 amp circuit.
Do you think this is feasible and makes sense? Will an 8% increase in power make a difference on reaching cone 6? If so, who can I go to to get the elements?