Kiln is dead

[Abacus Beads]

Working away and looked over to the kiln and discovered it was loosing heat really fast. not like going into an annealing cycle but from 957 to room temp in about 3 min. It's a Glass Hive kiln that I really love. Anyone have a suggestion on what's going on? or what I need to do to find out what needs to be replaced? HELP!!!!
Liz R

[caliente]

Is the temperature probe still in there where it's supposed to be? Is it possible it has come loose? The kiln itself would retain its heat way longer than that and not be able to cool that quickly. Seems like an issue with temperature readings, imho.

[Dragonharper]

Most likely cause is a bad relay. Although it could be the thermocouple. Is the kiln still warm, stick a rod under the punty door as see if it gets hot. If so then unplug it because the thermocouple is bad and you going to melt the work you have in there.

[Abacus Beads]

Temp probe is still in place. So it maybe is a bad relay. Is this something an "old lady" could fix or do I have to send it out?
Liz R

[jamie lynne]

Are you sure it heated up all the way to begin with? From garage temp to room temp should take way longer than 3 minutes. When my kiln shuts off at 700 it takes hours for it to go to room temp. I'm working with a Glass Hive as well.

I'd call Pam, see what she says.

[echeveria]

You can probably put in a relay. And I'd bet that Glass Hive will walk you through it

[Lisi]

I have a Bartlett controller on my Paragon. My controller did that once about 4-5 months ago. When it reached the anneal temp, it started dropping rapidly. I pushed start to turn it off, switched the toggle to off, and unplugged it for a few minutes, turned it back on with the toggle switch, and pushed the "review" button so it would show my program step by step. When on "rEdl" (ready), I hit start. It was fine after that. I'm not sure if I had done something to mess with the last program or not before that day, but it's possible there must have been some kind of digital glitch and it needed to be unplugged to reset. Can that happen, does anyone know??

Did you change the last program? I did that once and punched in the wrong numbers, and it started heating up rather rapidly past 968, and I freaked when it got to 1000. Good thing I was watching it, or it would have gone all the way up to 1410 and cracked my beads! I was trying to set the ramp rate to 1410 which is 45 minutes, and accidently set it as the garaging hold temp. I had tiny spacers in the kiln, more than 300 of them and was batch annealing those, but trying to get to garaging to make my larger beads. I could have lost those 300+ spacers. I think they would have slumped at that temp.

[dusty]

It doesn't make sense that it'd be the relay or your annealing schedule. Any kiln should take way longer than 3 minutes to go from 900+ to room temp, even if unplugged.

It seems it's the controller's logic or the temperature probe that's at fault. I'd start by just unplugging the kiln for a few minutes and plugging it back in to reset it, and making sure the temperature probe is still in place while it's unplugged.

[HarrachGlass]

I had issues with my kiln last year. It took me awhile to figure out what was wrong but when I finally did, I fixed it myself. You just have to go through the kiln and figure out what's wrong first, that's the hard part. Fixing it is pretty easy.

[Abacus Beads]

Lisi
Had the right clue. I unplugged it and let it sit for about 5 min. plugged it back in and went through the routine if getting it set and wow as if by magic it went right to work. Thanks everyone for your input, I really appreciate the help.
Liz R

[Lisi]

Originally Posted by Abacus Beads

Lisi
Had the right clue. I unplugged it and let it sit for about 5 min. plugged it back in and went through the routine if getting it set and wow as if by magic it went right to work. Thanks everyone for your input, I really appreciate the help.
Liz R

I'm glad I saw your post and was able to help you out with that today.

[KJohn]

Yay!