Safety First: This is not OK for the powder coating oven

During a spot train for the large oven we checked the first three cycles on the PID
Not only had a member not reset the cycles for powder coating as required, they had set a dangerous temperature.

The powder coating oven is not good to operate at 2000 degrees.

EDIT: for those who don’t know, we have a limit of 500 degrees for the oven since we don’t know the upper limit, but it sure as hell ain’t a kiln or heat treating furnace like someone apparently wants it to be.

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Or as some of us once opined, a DIY cremation oven

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Haven’t gotten a chance to use it yet, but wasn’t aware of the 500deg limit - any chance we could get a “long wave cure powders only” sign on it or something like that? (Or did I just miss where this was already documented? Totally possible…)

Not 100% effective, but a labelmaker note saying “Max Temp 500F” right above the controller seems to be a good idea.

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Yup. I hadn’t put one there because I had a volunteer making a labeled instruction and requirement sheet to hang there

Then it fell through, and a different volunteer was working on it. I don’t know what happened to their copy that I saw at a meeting. It had been a lower priority since it was just a duplicate of what’s in the training.

I’m going to put a label on it when I’m in next since the sheet never materialised and we have had an actual problem now.

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I specifically remember Jim go over the temp in training. Did the user complete training?

We don’t know who it was. This was on the second cycle luckily, and part of why I teach people to reset the cycle start point (I e. Starts on cycle 1) when they turn the unit on.

I was hoping I could keep the spot train equipment on just the padlocks for the time being, but RFID may be coming sooner to metal than I thought

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I’m interested in what they are firing that hot.
Are they annealing metal in it?

Might have been trying to heat treat something

Why not put a second ‘locked’ thermostat that is set to 500. run them in series so that it runs to 500 then shuts off whereas the other one actually controls the ramp / dwell / schedule?

So there actually is an Arduino inside that was originally programmed to never let the unit exceed 200-odd degrees (this oven was previously used for carbon fiber work and the owner added that in). The owner never got us the code, so we need to reverse engineer the thermocouple scaling on the ADC to calculate the right settings to program it back in-line or replace the hardware with something that doesn’t need it.

I can do a sign for you - but need the information to put on said sign. While I watched while Scott was teaching Larry and Tom Thomas how to use it, that was a long time ago.

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Here’s the basic info for an abbreviated reminders:

  • check interior before energising
  • do not exceed 500F
  • reset the first three cycles to 425F @ 9999 seconds if you change them
  • must remain at DMS whilst unit is energised
  • Open an issue in Talk if any problem arises
  • Use LOTO if one has to clean or set foot inside the oven
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What’s LOTO?
And is British-speak required?

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Lock out Tag out

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And British speak not required, just my default spellcheck since I mostly work with groups that use it

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I know I’m a broken record, but hasn’t stopped me before. :slight_smile: Cameras and consequences.

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I replied to: incorrectly. Meant to reply to first post.

@hon1nbo
Is this worded correctly?
powder-coat.pdf (18.4 KB)

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Looks good!

Thanks!