If you take care of it it will last forever. I have some that have been around for over 15 years. Make sure you dont hit or touch the protection tube for the s-type cause you might break it.
Abe
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If you take care of it it will last forever. I have some that have been around for over 15 years. Make sure you dont hit or touch the protection tube for the s-type cause you might break it.
Abe
What would be awesome to know is an overall cost of running the kilns - how many firings before elements need replacing, or crucibles, or anything else that would wear out. How much does ten or thirty pounds of cullet cost? How does using clear vs. colour affect the maintenance costs?
I'm a bottom line type of guy....
Bo Great question. Crucibles are hard to say how long they will last because there is no way to insure that every crucible will work the same. We get anywhere from 2 weeks to 16 months when we make color from batch and we would figure that if people are using cullet, odds and seconds to melt the life of the crucible would be much greater. Darby Holm has used his amber purple crucible for 3 years now and has not had one problem. 10 to 30 lbs of cullet would cost you anywhere from $16.00 per pound up to $40.00 per pound just depends on what color and how much volume. The elements are also a not sure thing if you follow the basic steps of how to run a crucible furnace you will prolong the life of the furnace. Elements burn out for many different reasons and there is NO guarantee that they will last for what ever time, but to get an idea of how they run when used properly I would say you could leave the furnace on for 6 weeks straight at 2350f but after 6 weeks it would be time for the elements to be replaced. The life of the elements will be shorter if fired on and off all the time. There are many people that have had there unit run 20 times in a year, and it was on for more than 4 days each time. This is not a cheap process at all, there is many things that can go wrong like a crucible full of glass cracks and wastes all your glass and kills your furnace, if any of you have any questions about this process please fell free to call me and we can talk about the pros and cons. If any one tells you this is easy they are crazy cause if things get fucked up it could cost you $2500 for the fuck up.
Abe
That's a pricey fuck up. I'm fascinated by the process though. Abe are you going to be pulling tube at the dfo again this year? I missed it last year.
Abe please check your pm.
so why do we need scraper ,, couldnt we just do a lil dip n gather the trash off the top then be ready to go,, scrapping seems like it would be harder or hotter,, hehe
^ i was thinking about that too, like a 20mm rod? does that work?
Because as you heat your color batch, most of the air bubbles and "junk glass" rise to the top and this film forms. So you scrape before you do your color dipping to ensure you dont get stones or air bubbles in your finished product. You can re-use the film like Abe said if you save it, but just beware the quality may diminish.
Thanks a lot Abe!
rod might get floppy pretty fast .but i didnt try.I am sure it will gather it off top of pot but the sides of crucible accumulate glass a little also and the scraper has the radius of pot shape at the end of tool,so scraping the pot is no problem...what size rod you thinking?..I got the scraper from abe its some kind of crazy stainless that you cant even buy(general public cant)the freakin thing didnt ever even get warm where i was holding it.....but i had tool dipped in pot for prolly a minute or so teying to scrape that crap layer off.....you can totally see it .the slag layer was like darker and had air bubbles
sorry bout the rant i fired my kiln up yesterday....
Im just trying to rig a ghetto setup,, cheap as possible got a old top loader im gona try n burn down,,
lol you might as well just flush your money in the toilet then, cuz you will probably mess up alot of good glass with a ghetto rig.
dont worry wont be as ghetto as you think,, and i like flushin cash its the best...
So how can you heat the Darby at 400' per hour and not screw up your crucibles?
After looking at your link the Skutt kiln says 200' per hour max, not to thermal shock your crucible. So this tells me no matter what size your klin is it takes 10 hours to get to temp. Another thing I noticed was that the Skutt kiln had a max temp of 2300', so how can you get it to 2350?
^ nice investigating skills
skutt says that because any hotter than that and elements burn out pretty fast ...I think...witch they do
What type and gauge elements are you using?
Been thinking of the Kanthal APM for my furnace.