liambesaw

Got a glaze firing in, was able to fit 40 mugs.  This is a representative sample!  So happy to finally have an electric kiln working!
This week I have a bunch of candles I'm working on, gonna be great!  Right now I have a bunch of lidded containers bisquing, big stuff I have to fire alone, can't really pack it too tight.  Y'all that grew up on electric have no idea how easy youve got it!!!
 

Hmm a skilled potter and talented electrician. Nice glaze!
Just  finished our Rays Cream to get rid of pinholes and dial in the perfect amount of movement with trapped titanium crystals.
Funny,  just pulled this out of the ELECTRIC test kiln today. (Sorry, I know  I have it made, but couldn’t resist)
 

Got a glaze firing in, was able to fit 40 mugs.  This is a representative sample!  So happy to finally have an electric kiln working!
This week I have a bunch of candles I'm working on, gonna be great!  Right now I have a bunch of lidded containers bisquing, big stuff I have to fire alone, can't really pack it too tight.  Y'all that grew up on electric have no idea how easy youve got it!!!
 

Got a glaze firing in, was able to fit 40 mugs.  This is a representative sample!  So happy to finally have an electric kiln working!
This week I have a bunch of candles I'm working on, gonna be great!  Right now I have a bunch of lidded containers bisquing, big stuff I have to fire alone, can't really pack it too tight.  Y'all that grew up on electric have no idea how easy youve got it!!!
 

It's funny, this thread inspired me to contact shimpo about my drifting pedal, looks like it's a simple fix wahoo!  I'm skeptical of course, the thing is 50 years old, but hey it's worth a shot!  I got a copy of the rk-2 price and stock list and they have quite a few important parts completely discontinued now so looks like when this thing dies I'll be in the market for a fancy dc motor one.

For me it's probably torque and speed control.  I use a vintage shimpo rk-2, the ring-cone drive is very torquey, the one gripe I have is that I can't take my foot off and maintain speed.  If I take my foot off it either goes to full speed or to zero.  Another thing I like, but isn't quite as important is that in neutral it spins freely like a banding wheel.  Makes on-wheel alterations very easy.

What matters most to me when throwing is not giving up. The internal dialogue goes something like this:
"I should be able to throw just as well and just as much as I did years ago."
"Oh really? Who sez?"
"OK, let's just see (again)."
"OK, I observe and concede-it just ain't happening."
"OK, practice, practice, practice."
"OK, I am bored, bored, bored."
"OK, I admit that the wrist, back, neck, right knee,  and left hip are not happy campers."
OK, no one can make me and I don't wanna. "
"OK, we'll just call BS on that one."
"OK, I accept reality."
" I'll give it a rest for a few days. "
"Time's up; try, try, and try again. "
"Good girl!" 
It's not about the wheel, which is smooth as silk, reversible (which is useful & I enjoy for some pieces), and the speed is highly variable, readily responsive throughout the process. I'll never use enough weight to worry about torque & my current model Brent would more than handle it if I wanted to pull a whopper some day.  What I'm not up for,  having done my homework, a bit of experimenting w/chiropractor's help, and thinking a lot about what I want out of the time/money I have for this activity, is a brace for standing. I'm OK with a reduced engagement with throwing, and thankful for those bowls that make the cut. What matters most is, as noted, not giving up. 

Yeah I just looked, permenant magnet DC motors.  Don't know if they're brushed or brushless, the literature doesn't say.

This week I'll be throwing 3lb bowls, 1 lb bowls and candle holders. Did my 3lb bowls last night, tonight will be 1lb bowls.  I also have a full kiln full of freshly bisqued mugs, will glaze, decorate and fire those this weekend!  I have enough stuff to bisque, so much actually, I should really start doing daily firings til I'm caught up, would save from having to dance around all this greenware.

Running conduit under the house today, WHAT A CHORE.  24 inches of clearance and I'm a big 220lb 6'2" monster so not a whole lot of room to work.  Hopefully this pays off in the next few weeks and I'll be firing an electric kiln!!!
Wire arrives via UPS sometime next week and I can run the wire and call the inspector if everything goes swell.  Fingers crossed I did everything OK, it looks good anyway.

Full body tyvek coveralls with a hood, respirator and goggles.  We don't really have dangerous spiders where I live, more likely to find a coyote or bear under there than a black widow

Running conduit under the house today, WHAT A CHORE.  24 inches of clearance and I'm a big 220lb 6'2" monster so not a whole lot of room to work.  Hopefully this pays off in the next few weeks and I'll be firing an electric kiln!!!
Wire arrives via UPS sometime next week and I can run the wire and call the inspector if everything goes swell.  Fingers crossed I did everything OK, it looks good anyway.

This week I'll be throwing 3lb bowls, 1 lb bowls and candle holders. Did my 3lb bowls last night, tonight will be 1lb bowls.  I also have a full kiln full of freshly bisqued mugs, will glaze, decorate and fire those this weekend!  I have enough stuff to bisque, so much actually, I should really start doing daily firings til I'm caught up, would save from having to dance around all this greenware.

Haha, I'm bisquing a full load of mugs as we speak.  It's 18x23 and I think I've got around 60 mugs in there.  I need to get a couple new shelves for it, the ones that came with it were well beaten with lowfire glaze and cracked/broken, and the shelves from my old kiln are too small.  No big deal, the shelves for this one are 40 bucks a piece.  
Other than that, the elements seem to be fine so far.  The bottom element is out of it's channel, and seems too small, I pinned it as best I could but it won.  New elements are on my list but will have to wait a bit, 200 bucks for a complete replace.
The good news is, it's getting hot and anything else that comes up will be a whole lot easier to handle than crawling in my crawlspace and running wire.

That I should have gone to electrician school.  I actually did the $1250+tax quoted work, saved myself 800 dollars.  Crawling in my crawlspace was a pain in the butt but definitely not worth 800.  
If I had done the short run I originally planned on, it would have been CAKE!   
I'm just glad to see glowing red coils, can't wait to open the kiln and see whats inside!

Haha, I'm bisquing a full load of mugs as we speak.  It's 18x23 and I think I've got around 60 mugs in there.  I need to get a couple new shelves for it, the ones that came with it were well beaten with lowfire glaze and cracked/broken, and the shelves from my old kiln are too small.  No big deal, the shelves for this one are 40 bucks a piece.  
Other than that, the elements seem to be fine so far.  The bottom element is out of it's channel, and seems too small, I pinned it as best I could but it won.  New elements are on my list but will have to wait a bit, 200 bucks for a complete replace.
The good news is, it's getting hot and anything else that comes up will be a whole lot easier to handle than crawling in my crawlspace and running wire.

Haha, I'm bisquing a full load of mugs as we speak.  It's 18x23 and I think I've got around 60 mugs in there.  I need to get a couple new shelves for it, the ones that came with it were well beaten with lowfire glaze and cracked/broken, and the shelves from my old kiln are too small.  No big deal, the shelves for this one are 40 bucks a piece.  
Other than that, the elements seem to be fine so far.  The bottom element is out of it's channel, and seems too small, I pinned it as best I could but it won.  New elements are on my list but will have to wait a bit, 200 bucks for a complete replace.
The good news is, it's getting hot and anything else that comes up will be a whole lot easier to handle than crawling in my crawlspace and running wire.

Great project!   I'm really enjoying following along with your progress.    

Just some comments from an artist (not an electrical engineer);   the metal box to me looks very scary if it's not grounded.  My kiln draws ~22 amps and I made sure the exposed metal sides of the kiln has a good ground path to earth that will easily dump enough current to allow the main breaker to go. (checkout ground bond testing)
It looks like the AC power runs very close to the TC cable?   to reduce noise you could try and keep the AC line away from the TC cable and also using a shielded TC cable.   The TC anomalies (open / short) could be linked to the i2c  library?  the library not accounting for clock stretching maybe?    as a workaround you could discard the values and perform another couple of temperature readings after a short delay and only branch your logic if multiple bad readings are present.
When i built my own controller I too was getting noise;  what I did was i took a few TC readings and discarded the upper and lower values,  then I did a check to see if the readings were stable within a +- 1c value;  if not,  I output a buzzer tick noise;  this greatly improved my temperature readings,  and what I noticed was on odd occasions and when my hot water boiler came on the ignition caused a lot of noise on the TC wires,  the noise was enough to throw a reading wildly off, but with the software error correction logic it simply just waits a couple of powerline cycles and takes another series of samples,  this for me works really well. 
When I read up about PID for my own controller I didn't really understand it, so i just rolled my own code;  I can't remember exactly how it works without checking the code but 
the thermal hysteresis for me was only an issue at the kilns lower temperatures,  after the kiln got hot it wasn't an issue, so my code logic just switched to a different mode when the kiln hits a certain temperature.
 
Not sure if that was helpful lol but keep up the great work!

Yes, I'm very sore... Mostly shoulders and knees.  The knees are all bruised up from crawling, didnt think to get some knee pads til I was far too gone for it to matter.  My wife is already tired of hearing my groaning haha

Yes, I'm very sore... Mostly shoulders and knees.  The knees are all bruised up from crawling, didnt think to get some knee pads til I was far too gone for it to matter.  My wife is already tired of hearing my groaning haha

Yes, I'm very sore... Mostly shoulders and knees.  The knees are all bruised up from crawling, didnt think to get some knee pads til I was far too gone for it to matter.  My wife is already tired of hearing my groaning haha

Running conduit under the house today, WHAT A CHORE.  24 inches of clearance and I'm a big 220lb 6'2" monster so not a whole lot of room to work.  Hopefully this pays off in the next few weeks and I'll be firing an electric kiln!!!
Wire arrives via UPS sometime next week and I can run the wire and call the inspector if everything goes swell.  Fingers crossed I did everything OK, it looks good anyway.

Full body tyvek coveralls with a hood, respirator and goggles.  We don't really have dangerous spiders where I live, more likely to find a coyote or bear under there than a black widow

Running conduit under the house today, WHAT A CHORE.  24 inches of clearance and I'm a big 220lb 6'2" monster so not a whole lot of room to work.  Hopefully this pays off in the next few weeks and I'll be firing an electric kiln!!!
Wire arrives via UPS sometime next week and I can run the wire and call the inspector if everything goes swell.  Fingers crossed I did everything OK, it looks good anyway.

Running conduit under the house today, WHAT A CHORE.  24 inches of clearance and I'm a big 220lb 6'2" monster so not a whole lot of room to work.  Hopefully this pays off in the next few weeks and I'll be firing an electric kiln!!!
Wire arrives via UPS sometime next week and I can run the wire and call the inspector if everything goes swell.  Fingers crossed I did everything OK, it looks good anyway.