. . . Another possible solution is a thermal fuse. I consulted with a metallurgist years ago and he presented me with a list of alloys that would have a melting point at what I determined to be in the overfire zone, say 1650 F. . .
Without knowing it, I constructed such a safety feature in my home made kilns, (and have installed it in my Rick LaLonde kilns also). The elements are joined to the high-temperature wires coming from the switches by an aluminum two-pronged connector. Too much heat, aluminum melts, kiln stops. It ain't scientific, but it works. Brock
electric kiln going berserk
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Lynne Chappell
- Posts: 186
- Joined: Fri Mar 14, 2003 2:05 am
- Location: Surrey B.C. Canada
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That sounds like a really good safety feature.
Re the timer: I put in a timer on an old manual kiln that would shut off all the power to the kiln. The timer is connected to a contact switch ahead of the kiln outlet box. Now I suppose this contact switch could also fail, but it only turns on and off once for each firing so it should last a long time. The hardest part was finding the right kind of timer - I didn't want one that turned on at a particular time of day (and there's lots of those kind in the stores), just an old-fashioned count-down timer where you dialed up how many hours you wanted to fire. Had to special order it from the electrical suppliers. Come to think of it, I should do this for my not-new-anymore digitally controlled kiln, since I frequently leave it firing after I go to bed.
Lynne
Re the timer: I put in a timer on an old manual kiln that would shut off all the power to the kiln. The timer is connected to a contact switch ahead of the kiln outlet box. Now I suppose this contact switch could also fail, but it only turns on and off once for each firing so it should last a long time. The hardest part was finding the right kind of timer - I didn't want one that turned on at a particular time of day (and there's lots of those kind in the stores), just an old-fashioned count-down timer where you dialed up how many hours you wanted to fire. Had to special order it from the electrical suppliers. Come to think of it, I should do this for my not-new-anymore digitally controlled kiln, since I frequently leave it firing after I go to bed.
Lynne