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Apr. 25th, 2018 09:59 pmSo this discombobulated mass of wiring:
is a kiln controller. It reads a thermocouple and will let me run the burnout oven under precise temperature control, fairly precise heat-up and cool-down ramp times, handles measurement and producing a just-sufficiently-slow on/off wave pattern to the relay that controls the oven coils, and logs what it's trying to do and what the actual results are to a memory card. Right now it'll also log to a webpage I can look at, via ethernet, and can take commands either from an attached computer sending serial commands, or from a file it reads off the memory card. (and it displays what it's measuring and trying to do to the nice lcd screen.) I'd like to have this whole thing working wirelessly at some point, and be able to change the heater tuning characteristics remotely as I accumulate data, but that's still in progress. Now I can do a gradual burnout of wax molds (if my homemade oven gets hot enough) and a gradual annealing of glass beads. Man, I've needed this capability for like 18 years.
It does need more robust packaging, though. I have to turn all this into a single board, that the thermocouple amplifier and LCD solder onto. (And add buttons for the menu system, because right now I have to simulate that by sticking a wire into various points as it runs, to simulate multiple attached buttons.)
The white proto board and the potentiometer are just there to handle power distribution and contrast for the LCD. None of the chips on there do anything.
is a kiln controller. It reads a thermocouple and will let me run the burnout oven under precise temperature control, fairly precise heat-up and cool-down ramp times, handles measurement and producing a just-sufficiently-slow on/off wave pattern to the relay that controls the oven coils, and logs what it's trying to do and what the actual results are to a memory card. Right now it'll also log to a webpage I can look at, via ethernet, and can take commands either from an attached computer sending serial commands, or from a file it reads off the memory card. (and it displays what it's measuring and trying to do to the nice lcd screen.) I'd like to have this whole thing working wirelessly at some point, and be able to change the heater tuning characteristics remotely as I accumulate data, but that's still in progress. Now I can do a gradual burnout of wax molds (if my homemade oven gets hot enough) and a gradual annealing of glass beads. Man, I've needed this capability for like 18 years.
It does need more robust packaging, though. I have to turn all this into a single board, that the thermocouple amplifier and LCD solder onto. (And add buttons for the menu system, because right now I have to simulate that by sticking a wire into various points as it runs, to simulate multiple attached buttons.)
The white proto board and the potentiometer are just there to handle power distribution and contrast for the LCD. None of the chips on there do anything.
