Dana Stripe
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Posts posted by Dana Stripe
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On 9/22/2022 at 10:33 PM, neilestrick said:
I've got two kilns in my shop right now that I'm converting to digital systems. One is 35+ years old and never been fired, the other is 33 years old and has only been fired a handful of times and only to low fire temps. I only paid $1000 for the pair. Old kilns can be a great value!
Neil,
Be sure and post some pictures when you get them completed, would like to see how you did it.
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45 minutes ago, Bill Kielb said:
Maybe, I think a clear picture and model number lookup likely answers the questions. Max temp generally means absolute top or design limit so firing to 1945 f (cone 04) probably hard to do if not brand new. A lookup of the model on Paragons website possibly provides the best info.
Interesting comment my Skutt kiln says the max temp is 2250/cone 6 and I fire it to cone 6-7 regularly with no issue.
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On 9/29/2022 at 9:29 PM, Bill Kielb said:
The last picture has the model number on it. A bit blurry but max temp looks like 2000 degrees (cone 01) so probably not a kiln for clay. Search paragons website for the model number ….. or post a clear picture of the equipment tag. The DTC 800 is the model of the control. Is it tropical where you are located? If the craftsman is still with us, I would ask him what he used it for as well.
Bill I would think cone 01 would be ok for low fire.
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On 9/1/2022 at 12:07 PM, Bill Kielb said:
I would love to know your experience with the longevity. Something that it should do but really hard to speculate and quantify.
Any additional life out of the elements is an extra bonus but SSR life will vastly out live any mechanical relay and it allows for much better temperature control. The relay cycle time is almost instantaneous vs a 10-60 second cycle time for a mechanical relay. Of course the shorter the cycle time the better the temperature control but shorter your mechanical relay life.
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Neil,
Thank you for the response, your correct I do not have any insulation in the design. However, I have put a sheet of aluminum within the air gap between the box and the kiln to function as a heat shield. It works pretty effectively, the output report states the controller only gets up to about 109F. I wanted to post it here as I could not find a lot of information on how to convert a older kiln. I put a fair bit of time in developing the design and hopefully it can help others.
You have a nice set up there also, you build either of those?
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Starrs_ridge
If you take a look at slide 12 I needed about 1.1A to drive everything so I needed a bigger transformer DP-241-6-24 is 1.25A, the DP-241-5-24 is only 0.5A. The biggest difference is that I have two fans to power to keep everything cool. When I talked to the tech at Bartlett he highly recommended fans in the design to keep the SSR and the controller cool. Also, a common issue I have seen in many forums with controller driven kilns is that its common for the controllers to overheat and will abort the firing cycle so I thought it was a good idea to have them in the dsign.
more info on the differences follow this link
https://belfuse.com/resources/datasheets/signaltransformer/ds-st-241-series.pdf
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You might find this interesting
- Bill Kielb and starrs_ridge
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Uploading here for anyone that's interested in installing a Bartlett Genesis Controller on an older manual kiln.
Due to file size limitations complete file can be found here
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p6gW0n2eRcdhVYPq22rkSBLLjY2uM7yq/view?usp=sharing
- starrs_ridge and Hulk
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PARAGON DTC 800 KILN
in Equipment Use and Repair
Posted · Edited by Dana Stripe
Bill refer to this post about my Skutt 231-18 kiln.
However, even before I converted it to a digital kiln it fired to cone 6 with a manual kiln setter no problem at all. I suspect your correct in the 150-200 firings but that's typical for almost anyone that mid fires regardless if its rated a cone 6 or a cone 10 kiln (firing to cone 6). Also, supporting this fact is that Skutt sells the same elements for my 231-18 (70's era cone 6 rated) and KM1018 ( modern cone 10 rated). Also the two kilns are rated with the same watts, the main difference being 2.5" brick for the cone 6 vs 3" brick for the cone 10.
Also I have no problem getting to a cone 7 with just adding a 5-10 min hold on a cone 6 firing (~2235F).