Furnace build thread

[David Hopman]

That's strange, because you'd think that with the ends of the elements sticking out of the back of the furnace, that at some place on them there would be a temp of 1200. I guess the lowered overall temp moves that 1200 point from the solid part to the spiral part and allows a crack. Taking the elements down to room temp doesn't seem to cause problems- 3 of mine have been cycled 5 times already with no issues.

Come to think of it, I used to lower the glory hole to 1590 at night. Stopped doing that because of some issues with the superstructure, but the elements seemed unaffected. Did that for at least a couple of years.

I didn't think that preheating the pellets was much trouble at all. I just filled up a stainless steel tray with 40 pounds of pellets, brought it up in the annealer, then dumped it in. It also reduced the temp loss in the furnace on a charge. I haven't been preheating the batch I'm using now, and have had no problems in 9 months.