making a burnout oven - CAL 9500P Set Up & Programming the Programmable PID by VOGMAN
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2024
- Burnout ovens (furnaces) are very useful for Lost Wax & Lost PLA Casting, as well as Pottery etc. But they're expensive. Here I show how an easy-build electric furnace becomes a Burnout Oven with the use of a programmable PID, in this case the CAL 9500P process controller. This is a nice controller, though a little confusing at first. So I also demonstrate how to set up the PID, program it and run the programs in a detailed, step by step manner.
Here's where I bought my CAL 9500P : tmseurope.co.uk/products/proc...
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I've just found your channel and wanted to say that I think that the way you explain everything so clearly and thoroughly is absolutely brilliant. This film on the setting up of the PID unit is particularly helpful. Thank you very much, a big thumbs up and I've subscribed.
Thanks very much : )
Good video again! And a real nice addition to the workshop 👍👍👍
Many thanks. Great little control unit this one : )
Cool setup Geoff!
I would hafta watch all of your other vids about this stuff, and build along with them to really understand all of this.
I will build my own burnout oven eventually, and when I do this is where I will come to get the insightful information I will require.
Can't wait to see it in action on a future vid!
Thanx for the show Geoff! :D
Thanks Cap. It's a dull video in honesty, but the outcome is an incredibly useful tool. Burnout ovens with their high degree of control can be used for all sorts. You can be sure I'll find things to try it on.
And you're right... much of this video isn't all that helpful unless you've seen the electric furnace build. It's all very easy, but to some it might look daunting without that earlier knowledge. But let's look at the evidence - it must be easy if I can do it : )
It's a pretty comprehensive build video. I think you'll consider watching it time well invested.
I'm extremely drunk so must remember to watch this again tomorrow lol
If it doesn't make any sense in the morning, have another drink ; )
This is a brilliant video Geoff! Great information and explanation of adding the controller. This is exactly the problem I had with my kiln. I have to manually adjust the dial to increase the temperature, while using an external pyrometer. Then I have to leave the kiln at a certain temp for the desired hours and try to remember to adjust the dial. My memory is a sieve at the best of times and the dial is pure guesswork. Not too mention I seriously underestimated how hot the kiln could get!
I'm going to have to pull my finger out and fix the kiln, but now you've given me hope that I can modify it to make the process automatic.
Thanks mate!
Thanks Dan. I used to have to set an alarm to wake me at 3 in the morning to adjust the temperature on my furnace, so you can imagine why I was keen to find a better control method : )
Electric furnaces are arguably the most controllable means of melting metal, preparing flasks, etc. They're not fast, but they can be controlled very precisely. And with a set up like this, I can set things running Monday evening, then not worry about things until Tuesday morning, safe in the knowledge that all the boxes have been ticked.
Glassblowing annealers are 1/3 the price of the burnout ovens you were looking at. Admittedly they are never clad in stainless steel, but they perform identically. Same controllers, elements, and brick. Sometimes as a cool safety feature the elements are sleeved in quartz tubing.
It's great that you built your own and everyone should- perhaps not on this large scale. A better DIY scale would be a single case of fire bricks and a pound of kanthal. I really like your coil calculator- very handy.
What an interesting idea. Thanks for the share.
Thx for this explanation ! hope it will help you improving your castings.
Thanks. I'll take all the help I can get : )
Thank You for sharing 👍as always awesome video.
Thanks Maciek : )
excellent! Always a pleasure to watch your vids. and being able to make, upgrade and then successfully use your own equipment I find always more satisfying than just plain buying the product - plus it saves money and in case of repair you know how to fix it. Maybe cast some organics in the future (succulents, small pinecones, crab claws etc now that you can easily adapt the burnout cycle? some would probably fail due to incomplete burnout - but still....
I agree completely. There's great satisfaction in knowing how something works. And when it goes wrong (things always do) you already know where to look. Money saved and a sense of satisfaction... can't be bad : )
As time goes on I've no doubt I'll find more and more uses for my burnout oven and if this improves my casting, even better!
Great tutorial Geoff! I gotta fix mine one of these days as I kinda smashed it into a million pieces while making other things 🤦🏻♂️ oops. Your vid makes it easy to follow! Great job 👍🏻
Thanks mate. They are useful things to have... even if it's just to lean on whilst you hit things : )
Great info. Good work
Many thanks : )
Super useful, Thank you.
Glad to hear that!
I need to do something like this with my small electric kiln that just has an on/off switch... The cheap imported PID's are tempting, but somewhat confusing to set up from what I've read, as they require reprogramming to reset their default (low) maximum temperature limits in many cases. Might be worth paying the extra money to not have that hassle, but that's something I need to think long and hard about before I order anything... This is helpful, thanks.
Do take your time. Do plenty of research. David Collinson (below) has already suggested an alternative that I hadn't come across, the XTMG-7000. But you're right, the control these things give us is amazing and very worthwhile.
@@vogman lol, it's still sitting in my living room after 8 months of owning it and has hardly even been touched - taking my time with it is no problem. Thanks for pointing out David's suggestion!
Very interesting and useful cheers
Thanks John.
After watching this I'm already wishing for a programmable PID with a USB interface for programming... still a nice little upgrade
Now stop talking sense...
; )
Quite a powerfull little controller, I had to setup a ebay pid for my dad's heat treating oven, and it was a pain to do.. I bet if I were to do it again I would rather just build a arduino based one since that would be easier for me lol
It's a very impressive unit that I'm barely using here, but it's not the easiest thing to figure out. I did toy with the arduino route but I chickened out. I thought it best to find an off-the-shelf solution that others could more easily use : )
This is sweet I’d love to build one of these
Thanks Patrick. Hopefully this week's video will show you how useful they are : )
Very cool video. More of that please! =).
many thanks : )
Damn Geoff I’m only four minutes into this and I am way out of my depth this is clearly above my paygrade. I would bloody love a burnout oven but I would have to use plaster of Paris as investment pasta or jewellers plaster in Australia is impossible to source. not to worry one day my friend very interesting anyway I’ll have to rewatch your other video before I continue with this. But who knows maybe Jannich will send me a surprise package of a nice little burnout oven for me to compete with the big boys🤔👍🏻.
🤘🏻😆🤘🏻
👙
Those are the sort of presents we'd all like from Jannich : )
Fingers crossed Devil Forge start making electrics...
I'll be honest, this one is not an exciting video to watch, but this PID took some figuring out and I thought I should pass that on to others out there. I looked for help on YT and found none, so with luck someone else will have an easier time setting theirs up than I did.
I bet in Australia, like the US, the casting industry is a closed industry and doesn't really talk or advertise. My local casting supply house serves a large multi-state region, has no website, has no catalog, and if you don't know exactly what you need they won't guide you (super friendly and helpful otherwise). Same goes for the local jewelry casting supply house, no website, no catalog, and supplies everyone in a large multi-state region. Not sure all the details on why much of the industry is so tight lipped and insular.
It's much the same in the UK. There's wholesale and retail. Retail provide the general public and wholesale provide the retailers. Finding retailers is easy. Finding wholesalers? They where cloaks of invisibility, whisper only in code and deny their own existence. Joking aside, finding them is half the battle of becoming a retailer, so retailers don't share. Wholesalers can't be bothered with annoying consumers who only want to buy "one" item. Thankfully the internet has made things easier, but not much.
Great video. That run process is totally bonkers though hehe.... Shame these companies cant add a couple of extra buttons and a bigger screen. Cheers 🍺👍👍👍
There are bigger unit - exactly the same just bigger - and they also have 3 buttons. No one though of a menu button, scroll, select option it seems : )
@@vogman I suspect there are no extra buttons because of manufacturing and/or engineering costs that come with them.
Your videos link together like lore building upon itself. Where will the tale bring us to next? Find out on the next episode of Vegoil Guy!
Damn... you've discovered my time travelling schemes ; )
Yes, that's what I need to do for my kiln.
You'll love the difference it makes : )
This video will, I´m sure, be hugely useful to a large number of people.
I did find it odd that the unit "thinks" in minutes when you´re setting the 3 hour soak time, yet in degrees per hour when it comes to setting ramp speeds. Still, it´s brilliant - and it even fitted straight into its predecessor´s mounting hole : )
By "large number of people," do you mean me and some bloke that ordered it by accident?
I genuinely hope it is useful to someone else out there. It's a great little unit but I will agree the designers behind it need several slaps. For me the menu is hopeless... we live in a world of scrolling menus nowadays. Press, arrow up or down, select - duh!
And turning on a program requires far too many steps... I'm sure a three key combo shortcut would have been possible.
However, it's running quietly as I type. Every hour or so I pop in to see if it's moved on to the next segment and I'm filled with a strange sense of pride when I discover it has. Wonderful. Sometimes being lazy is great : )
@@vogman I don´t think your sense of mild pride and wonder upon discovering that the unit´s moved on to the next step is at all strange, given the mind-twisting "logic" of its menu...
I´m still at the stage where I guerilla comandeer our domestic oven for this task, so you´ve moved a long way towards casting professionalism since those days!
Given your obvious gift with electronics, I'm surprised you have been tempted to have a bash at an electric furnace. The first time you see the coils glow, it's brown trousers all the way as you expect neighbourhood fuses to blow and death to swish his scythe energetically. But once you realise that - hang on, the coils are supposed to do that, and they're happy - it becomes just another tool. You might be able to make an attachment for your favourite bench : )
@@vogman Ha ha - I could make it into a superbench, capable of being outfitted as everything from a computer-controlled burnout/casting station to a gentlemen´s executive trouser press - and so much in between...
Be careful with some of those gentleman's accessories. It can attract the wrong sort of viewers : )
Excellent!!!
salvaged the parts from the local electronics dump would save a penny
If you can, nice one!!!
: )
Brilliant Video, very informative... I tried to convert my Berm Rex C100 temperature controller on my burnout oven to the suggested Cal 9500 and got stuck...
How do you determine how much power you need to reach a specific temperature with a given length of coil with a given resistance? For instance, 2100 F. I know that Kanthal can get up to around 2400 safely. It melts at about 2700F.
And would you need to run 220 or 110?
Stupid question maybe.. I finally got a kiln for burnout cycles.
But repeatedly I’ve had my plaster investment molds crack midway through. I’m using Oro Prestige plaster, mixing per the instructions and letting it fully cure for a day or two before the oven.
But they keep cracking.. the only thinking: I put them on a broken kiln shelf, opening down. I figured it can “run out” some wax gunk that way. You suppose the vapor and everything is getting trapped and causing the cracking?
Wow, those instructions at 3:45 are an absolute nightmare. The video seems quite helpful if anyone is doing the same project with this controller.
Now that you have the burnout oven, maybe time to revisit making molds directly from Warhammer minis?
They are strangely awkward instructions. I hope my video makes it easier for someone else out there, because they gave me a headache : )
What do you mean by the mold...?
@@vogman I was just remembering the Stormcast video where there seemed to be some burnout issues.
Ahhh, yes. I'll be trying again now with a slooooooooooooooooooow burnout : )
I think it’d be really cool to see a Lost PLA casting of a Fallout 4 Nuka World thirst zapper 😊 just a suggestion and love your work. Perhaps a casting challenge of Fallout between you artbyadrock and BigstackD!
Thanks Anthony.
i would suggest 1. a potentiometer instead of a controller 2. a cheap timer 3. for the coils, stretch them a little to distribute the heat
so you cant do lost pla casting with out a burn put oven.
can you not use a normal oven
Not really Darren. You can certainly melt away wax or PLA in your kitchen oven, but the investment plaster needs to be baked at high temperatures to fully cure and make it porous enough for the vacuum to pull through it. This then helps you achieve the super fine detail associated with wax & PLA.
Hello I have a question for you. When you change it to the Cal 9500p. Did you have trouble with the solid state module?
A bit late to the party, but can I just buy a kilm to convert into a burn out oven? Can I run 120v coils with 220v since I'll be using the pid?
Hi there, what SSR are you using? I will be wiring a 7.5 amp kiln with a programmable PID but the lowest im seeing for SSRs is 10 amp, is that the maximum or minimum
🤓 👍
I have to ask as ive been looking, if a programmable tabletop kiln can get to the temperatures I need, could it be used as both a melting furnace and a burnout oven? I understand that the crucible will cool by the time I get the metal melted and that may cause issues but if I can fix those issues with luck or a bunch of sanding the savings of not needing a oven and a furnace might be worth the extra work
Absolutely. I haven't lost a tool here, I've gained another. I can melt a crucible of metal with a very basic Step program (maybe Step to XX degree and Soak for 1 hour to ensure everything has melted) or I can run a complex sequence of temps.
If you're sensible with your furnace design, you could fit both a crucible and a flask inside at the same time. Then when the flask is ready, so is the metal : )
G'day Shy Owl.
I suppose that it depends on what kiln you have, but I have a small tabletop kiln (manual dial, no thermometer or timer) that I used to burn out and investment flask. This was the first time using the kiln and the first time using proper investment plaster (as opposed to home made).
I ended up melting most of the steel flask, the bottom of a reasonably thick cast iron muffin pan (to catch the wax etc) and melted and fused a stainless steel guard the flask was sitting on. When I finally opened the door, the floor of the kiln was a bubbling bowl of molten iron.
I went ahead and cast the part anyway. It wouldn't wash away properly because the investment had burnt about 2 cm in from the outside of the flask.
Don't underestimate the kilns capabilities...
Cheers
Dan
Do you prefer SSD over SSR? As I see the CAL MAXVU8 is the cheapest in the range of controllers but of course less features.
That's a nice unit but I was looking for a programmable unit that incorporated Ramping, which very few do. Most Step and Ramping to me is a fabulous feature. I can raise or lower a temperature very slooooooowly with this, and I love that. I've already got a few experiments bouncing around in my tiny mind : )
Hi Geoff. Interesting alteration to your electric furnace/oven. I guess that now you will be able to design programs to dry out your plaster molds and also to preheat your metal. You could also use it to do a pre or post heat treatment.
Your watch is looking rather tight and painful on your wrist which is a worry. How are you fairing in the heatwave? Mark
Thanks Mark. There's lots of potential with my oven now... the mind fizzes with ideas : )
The wrist? It's a medical thing. I swell in places at times, mainly hands and feet. The heat doesn't help though : )
Is it possible to have an automated foundry/burnout oven such as this but uses waste oil instead of electricity as the main heat source?
I would imagine it's possible and gas burnout ovens exist. But it's not something I've ever tried.
By building this could it also help you cure your crucibles before their first initial use
Absolutely... it maximises control of an already useful furnace : )
Keep up the awesome work man
Hi Geoff,
I am looking to buy the same controller for my burnout kiln but their website shows an analogue and a digital version. Which one did you go with?
That's a new one to me... I genuinely don't recall it being an issue. But at the same time my creaking brain seems to remember something about memory efficiency of the device and it not making a massive difference.
I'm sorry Richard, I'm not a lot of use to you here. It might be worth telling them your planned use and asking their advice, but my guess, unless you're doing something VERY complex, is that it won't really alter your plans much.
Hello im having a problem programming my Cal 9500, when i try to select Program P from the level menu, it skips "level P" and goes directly to level A.
ive tried reseting the micro-controller to see if that helps but the problem prevails.
could a mistake in my wiring be causing a faulty micro controller?
the only reason im leaning agains deducing that it is the wiring is because everything else seems to work perfectly fine except for the skipping of "level P"
I think you should start making these ovens for sale :)
That's a bit beyond me I think : )
@@vogman Oh I think you're getting there :)
I think I mentioned when you asked the community back in April whether you should make this video, that at least in the US if you get caught venting something like this directly into the oven you can be very heavily fined by the EPA or even arrested, so you need to have either a dedicated and filtered exhaust port or else a filtered vacuum port both for your own health and the health of anyone around you and for legal reasons. My personal preference would be a vacuum port so you can pull down the container's atmosphere to further aid in burnout and sintering, but I'm not sure how well an oven like this could hold a vacuum without an external enclosure or how difficult it might or might not be to control a vacuum pump via PID (though I have had thoughts that it might be feasible to control both heat and vacuum using an Arduino RAMPS or other 3d printer control system, assuming it can withstand the currents and voltages involved).
Would you be willing sometime to look into how to add a ported valve to an oven like yours and whether a container made of firebrick can hold even a low vacuum?
Thanks for all the informative videos you provide!
I do like clean air and I will give the matter some thought.
Mind you, I do see some irony in this. I'm unaware of anything toxic involved in the burnout sequence. But Petrobond sand, which certainly seems very popular in the US, is Oiled Sand. I have been told (and that person COULD have been wrong) that the fumes that come off that are toxic. Not only that, once used, the sand is oil-contaminated and cannot be placed onto soil, etc.
Like I say, I've never used Petrobond or any make of oiled sand, so I can't say whether this is true, but I can't help but wonder if the laws you mention are looking at the right part of the casting process ; )
I was speaking more from the sense of general smelting and burnout use, not any particular product - and that's what police and regulators would probably be thinking about if they caught you using a smithing oven like this outdoors or in a public setting and venting it without filtering.
Regardless of that, thanks for the thought and advice, and thanks for agreeing to look into things for us.
No problem.
Believe it or not, I am sympathetic. I am a bit of a greeny at heart : ).
It's only illegal if you get caught
how much money did you invest to build it?
Hello friend, I am a faithful follower of yours, please can you tell me where to find the type K thermocouple, or it is included in the CAL 9500P ,thanks in advance
I got mine on eBay : )
Just out of curiosity, what does your workflow look like? It seems like it takes at least 12 hours to burnout a mold leading directly to casting, so do you set up the burnout the night before?
I typically run over night. I set things up in the evening and by early morning, everything is ready to go : )
@@vogman That makes a ton of sense! Since you focused on the burnout cycle on this video, it was the first time I realized how long that aspect of the process took. Really cool and useful video!
Didn't you already use your furnace as a burnout oven? How is this different?
You're absolutely right Voro. But I had to be the controller. I had to time things and adjust temperatures, etc. I've regularly had to take an alarm clock to bed and get up in the middle of the night to adjust the temperature.
Now life is MUCH easier. I can have a full nights sleep : )
The other issue is Ramping. Again if I wanted to raise a temperature at a certain rate, like 150C every hour until 730C, previously I had to calculate this manually. The PID learns the performance of the furnace much more accurately than I can and thus plot and calculate everything. I just type in the figures and it does the work.
So control is the answer my friend : )
Can i buy a cheap kiln and then change the temperature unit out for the programmable unit you use in this video so i don't have to build the furnace from scratch?
Yes, if you're up to the electronics 😁
@@vogman im not sure, i definitely know someone who is though
Hows the remote control lawnmower? i just found your channel because of that and was wondering about the improvements. I guess ill watch all your other videos while i wait :D
Hi Dale. Funnily enough it's in bits at the moment. I'm altering the track layout slightly to make driving up steps easier. I'll be sharing all this soon : )
@@vogman I have had the idea to build something like this as well and that is how i found your video ill be looking forward to see your improvements so when i eventually build mine ill learn from your mistakes and probably make some of my own.
If you are in the US... Here is the proper ramp/soak controller from Auber Instruments. www.auberins.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=4 The ones on fleabay that are 30bucks don't perform this vital function.
Nice share, thanks
Very pretty! I've about £230 less of a budget, so considering the el-cheapo chinesium XMTG-7000 from aliex for about £15, seems to do the same funtion for a burn out, though just a single, even more awkward to set up, programme. Think it'll suffice for just doing plaster burnouts/cooking? xD
e.g. of it's function ua-cam.com/video/ybfv-GRNabM/v-deo.html
Well now I'm annoyed... I searched for ages to find a programmable PID. I was amazed Inkbird didn't do one. Looks like I could have saved a bundle and I hate wasting money as I have precious little to waste : )
please my friend ,link where buy this(XMTG-7000)
so why do I need an electric furnace to start with? Can't I just build this from scratch?
I built my own electric furnace and provided some videos to help folks along, as I think it's a nice easy project. When it came to the programmable PID, I did consider building my own. But time was against me and sometimes buying is just so much easier. But if you have the electronic skills, go for it my friend : )
Well above my Paygrade Knowledge. If you need to know how to Neuter a Cat or remove Tumors from a Dogs intestines I'm your man. Knobs-what's wrong with knobs, you know, like on an older Stove with little Gradient marks for temps....Knobs, yeah, that's the Ticket. :D
You are a vet, sir? Massive respect. Incredible knowledge you guys have and an obvious love of animals. As a dog lover myself (strictly in the non-perverse way) I'm grateful to guys like you keeping our pooches perky : )
@@vogman no sir, I was in the business a lot of years and headed towards vet schol but the vision thingy ended that-so I became a Photographer. Long story. :)
Life is an interesting journey and we often take roads we didn't expect. But personally I like to think those are the roads we're supposed to take : )