Heat treat furnace

[Highpower]

(12-04-2015, 01:35 PM)TomG Wrote: Seems like whenever I order something based on expected dimensions, it always ends up wrong.

Tom

Copy that!  

Well -- I picked up the furnace today. Good news / bad news..... but most of it GOOD.  

It's a pretty clean unit and slightly bigger than I thought. Inside dimensions are 4.5 x 4.5 x 6.5 inches so it's a little deeper than I was expecting. The whole thing stands nearly 15 inches tall. 240 volt, 6.3 amps input. I was a little surprised to see that it has a mirrored scale. (Not that it will be used.) Nice touch though. Makes me miss my old Simpson 260 VOM.  

Plugged it in and flipped the switch to see what would happen, and was rewarded with a nice pink glow around the interior walls.  

I didn't want to leave it on for very long though because of the bad news. The thermocouple is GONE! The only thing left was a short (1-3/4") piece of broken ceramic rod that used to house the thermocouple wire loop. The furnace only has a 1/4" diameter hole in the back of the case that goes straight into the interior chamber where the thermocouple belongs. So I have no idea of how it is supposed to be retained in the case, and absolutely no clue about how long it should be or how much is supposed to be sticking into the interior chamber.  

So for now, I've ordered a PID controller, a 40 amp SSR (solid state relay) for supplying power to the heating element(s), and a heat sink for the SSR. I'll probably be doing a lot of web surfing and head scratching trying to figure out what to do for a thermocouple and how to mount/seal it.  

But hey..... for 2 bills, I ain't complaining!