Controller / Energy meter idea

[Benoit]

Oh electrical geniuses please lend me your ears, well, eye balls! If I had a plug to draw mains electricity from the wall and ran it into:



Which then wired into a regular old plug socket, and the plug socket had one of these in:



Which then had my 3kW heating element plugged into it, all neatly housed on some kind of project box.....would it allow me control of said element whilst also telling me the watts going in?
Assuming all things are wired correctly & the SSR has an appropriate pot wired into it?

[Mash]

Yes. Thats is my understanding. I did some research into this and came up with ..

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171122672930? ... EBIDX%3AIT

Pretty much already built. I am planning heart surgury for my BM and a pot head .... to keep ICE happy :-)

The orignal idea came from MR FS I think.

[Icefever]

What ya doing dude??? with the BM??

[Benoit]

I have one of those on my water urn at the mo, I think the urn is going to become a redneck mash tun so I guess there's no harm pinching the controls & buying an energy plug as planned....it certainly would be less work!!

[Mash]

What ya doing dude??? with the BM??

Lid that clamps onto handles.
Pot heed and column.
Additional control box with BM sockets wired directly to the elephants (did you see what I did there)
Voila. A BM still!

Mash. Ferment. Strip or Spirit all in one.

Just one tiny problemo .....

[Blue_Duck]

That's more or less the same as i use on my T500, mine's the 3000w
does a damn good job.





fixed it into an old wooden box, it was something my departed wife gave to her mother, kept it for sentimental reasons, least it's still getting used.

cheers B_D

[Easydrinker]

I think you guys sorted this before I arrived, but I have to agree,aside from me using a metal box, purely to help in the oooling aspect.

Robert.

[Mash]

I think you guys sorted this before I arrived, but I have to agree,aside from me using a metal box, purely to help in the oooling aspect.

Robert.

Did you mean oooling as the present participle of 'ooooooo'

You know, the noise often made in response to stainless steel items.

ie It would give it more oooooooo-ableness if it was in metal box.

Properly made me laugh - cracking up here while I type..

[Benoit]

Stainless steel box definitely has maximum "oooool"!!
I'd love to say I'd give it a go but it's such an absolute pain in the arse to cut & work with you need more than a reasonable diyers collection of tools to do it properly...although spray painting a plastic box could be an adequate cheat! No one has to know!

[Mr Four Square]

I've run a similar set up for years. No fan required and stored it in a lunch box.

Did you mean that the element you are controlling is 3kw?

Mine has a 1800w element and a 3000w SSR. From memory the power meter said it only handled up to 2.6 kW. So check what your power meter rated for.

[Benoit]

Yes 3kW element & plug goes up to that so all good, I know Anavrin says the element does go slightly higher but I guess I'll just have to be careful. The plug has an auto cutoff, nice little feature if anything goes wrong....safety first!

[Mr Four Square]

I meant check out the rating of the power meter. If you are running 3kw through the element it may be too much for the power meter.

[Myles]

Even if you don't end up buying one of their products, it is worth looking through the United Automation site for ideas.

I have one of these. http://www.united-automation.com/zvs-16dv-burst-fired-ac-energy-regulator-110/

also one of these http://www.united-automation.com/psr-25/

and a component built PSR 40 kit from pintoshine which I don't think are available any more.

Just bear in mind that motor controllers and heat controllers are not the same thing. sometimes it is more cost effective to get a fully encapsulated power controller that you can just fit into a box.

EDIT: Remember that once you have checked the linearity of your controller you don't actually NEED to know the actual power levels. Its really about repeatability between runs so the power meter permanently in the circuit is not actually necessary. And to be correct what you are interested in is the power going to the element and not the power going INTO the controller. Some of the controllers convert a lot of the input into heat so the input isn't really meaningful.

[Mash]

...And to be correct what you are interested in is the power going to the element and not the power going INTO the controller. Some of the controllers convert a lot of the input into heat so the input isn't really meaningful.

Agreed, but surely it would be consistent so as to be a guide ?

[Myles]

Absolutely right @Mash I am just being fussy. But I also said that the actual power being used is not really that important.

To be honest what is probably of most value is knowing if it is linear or not. For example on an early one of mine I got this result.

There is 90 degrees that does nothing at all but from then on it is reasonable. 0 to 3 kW.

And a different controller in % of max power.