BeefSupremeJr said:

Okay listen i was researching hotplates and so, for anyone who could be following along here and potentially trying to do what im doing or someething similar let me tell you what i found out:

nothing but cadco csr-3t will work for our purposes.  *please*  do not cut corners at this critical point.  you might think youre saving a bunch of money but ask yourself:

"how much would i pay NOT to burn my house down?"

for me that number is well beyond the cost of a cadco which, is a pretty good deal right now if you know where to look. 

the issue is duty cycle.  yes, many appliances including the cuisinart--which is probably a pretty decent kitchen tool--will boil water but you need to look at DUTY CYCLE as per manufacturers specs.  eveything but cadco is rated for 30min max.  *buzz* nope.  we need 2 hrs at a minimum. 

cadco duty cycle is--drumroll, please--EIGHT. FUCKING. HOURS. 

so... thats where the rest of the money goes when buying a hotplate.  the wiring.  the contacts.  the housing.  the e l e m e n t



moral of the story for anyone following along:

cadco or nothing.  if youre going to do stupid shit like beef does, do it with knowledge please.

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I'm literally 6 months late with my reply...apologies
CADCO or nothing, can vouch for them 100%

and no, i'm not afilliated or anything lol

OldManRiver said:

I'm gonna be that guy.  Just at first, and then I have a possible contribution,

Beef, I'm reading your description of your problem about having to constantly attend to the PC, having the rate vary with your apartment temp and such. 

While you continue to pursue your vision, which I am following with great interest, a somewhat primitive way to reduce the cycling might be to increase the amount of water in the PC, which would give some heat sink.

In my PC, I have a stainless steel trivet sized for the PC, Amazon will provide. I have several two inch stainless bolts, clamped onto that as legs. There is tons of water, so it holds temp well, and won't run out over three hours.

Thus concludes my low tech, redneck engineered approach. And now, for something completely different...


I believe there is a opportunity for improvement in the essence of your current design. As I understand the previous discussion, your switch is intended to control the heating source only.  Of particular note, you don't have a way to manage the beginning process of venting automatically, requiring (IMO, at least) manual attendance at the beginning of the cycle. 

What if you refactored this use of your switch/gauge as a general purpose input to whatever the cool kids are using these days, raspberry or ARM, and used that to control both heat and the valve to create pressure?  If you could do that, you can schedule the entire cycle.

You'd need a solenoid controllable valve, and bits and pieces for whatever platform. 

If this interests you, I have a Raspberry lying around and would be intrigued to discuss further.

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Coincidentally, i've been running mine with 4 qts of water, every single cycle. The reason being the low numbers of jars (mostly 5 or 7 jars) and substrate bags. Now, when running the 1000mL media bottle of agar, i switch trivets for the classic flat one, two of them back to back. I'm pretty old and stubborn so there's that

BeefSupremeJr said:

and yes.  cadco or nothin.  i was happy to spend this little bit of money on this part because i realized that there was no other way and im happy to just own one.  also, they were and are still on sale i beleive. 

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FUCK YEAH!!

justjarvis said:

Just get switchcraft jacks.  Those work great.  I build guitar amps as one of my hobbies.  Tube amps that is.  I’ve never seen a switchcraft jack fail.

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BeefSupremeJr said:

the hardest lesson of yesterday is "dont buy cheap components".  troubleshooting is hard enough without compounding the situation with defective parts. 

....

i love this shit.  i probably should have been an electrician but life had other plans i guess.

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