Olympic Doll Kiln E Gutting

[Hyn Patty]

So, my Olympic Doll E kiln is 21 years old and just died on me.  Threw a vague error but without a code.  WAY overdue to gut this puppy as the only thing I've replaced on it over the years is the thermocouple and more recently the relay.  My project for today was to pull out the wiring and rebuild the wiring harness, swap out the transformer for a new one, and swap out the elements.  Took me a bit over an  hour to do, maybe an hour and a half.    A few quick photos of the poor old thing to follow.

First shot is the Bartlett electronic controller removed and set out on my work table.  Care was taken to make sure I got a photo of how the elements were wired up before I cut the connections with bolt cutters.  Here you can see my new elements on the upper left ready to install.  Ordered high temp wire of the same 10 AGW by Radix.  The thin wires I can pick up at my local hardware store.  I /think/ and hope the motherboard is still all right and the fuse is fine.

Second photo is to remind me how and where the K thermocouple was attached.  I removed it just to get it out of my way so I could clean the inside well and get to the rest of the wiring easily.  Taking photos step by step before I disconnect anything helps me know how to hook it back up afterwards.  All that gunk inside got vacuumed out until the inside of the controller box was as clean as possible.  All of the connectors were either replaced with new or steel brushed so they were clean contacts, then checked with the multimeter.

 

Edited July 20 by Hyn Patty
Added a bit.

[Hyn Patty]

My dog, Conan, an 18 month old German Shepherd (sable) was very helpful.  Every time I bent over to pull pins on the elements he kept licking me in my ear!  Thankfully, he didn't drink out of the toilet until after I was finished.  Thank you for that.  I kept laughing pretty hard so it took me a bit longer but pulling the elements and putting in the new ones is pretty easy.  Needle nose plyers for the win!

A fencing tool or bolt cutters is really helpful!  Kanthal wire used to make elements is really difficult for my little hands to cut but a fencing tool made that task easy when I needed to shorten up the ends.  Once the ceramic insulators were slid into place my husband did help me with the heavy duty crimping.

[Hyn Patty]

I still have cosmetic things to fix, a crack in the bottom and some chips around the top of the lid, but here's the Olympic kiln heating up for the cone 04 oxidation firing tonight after about an hour and a half later.  Tada!  Pretty easy job.  Now both of my kilns, my little Olympic and my larger Skutt, are both rewired and have new parts.  Hopefully they'll both be good for another 10 or 20 years but we'll see.  Sooner or later I'll have to swap out those mother boards in the controllers, I expect, but so far so good!

If you don't know how to do it, don't be afraid to look it up.  Wiring diagrams are often online or available from your kiln manufacturer.  There's also a Youtube video for almost anything.