• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Side Bender

Today's progress.

Cat's cradle springs to mind!

3ABF479F-627B-4ABB-818A-604A3CCA4937.jpeg

I found a way to secure the panel to the machine box, thus not needing the enclosure box.

B185E4F2-743A-4BCE-9940-E29BE49FFF41.jpeg

FD8FEFFE-5DEA-4878-8E8C-373751D5F649.jpeg

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It's beginning to look like a guitar bending machine!

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Nothing went bang!

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Time for dinner. Testing and programming tomorrow.
 
Delighted to see this post, I will be even more grateful when the time comes to do the same.
Regarding your blanket, I bought one from ebay a long long time ago, and not having a clue about anything, got the idea that I would have needed a step up/down inverter for it.
Would love to hear some input on this.

And a source of the steel (stainless?) if you can.
Many thanks for posting this thread, 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-)
Tom
 
TomTrees":zlaqkhco said:
Delighted to see this post, I will be even more grateful when the time comes to do the same.
Regarding your blanket, I bought one from ebay a long long time ago, and not having a clue about anything, got the idea that I would have needed a step up/down inverter for it.
Would love to hear some input on this.

And a source of the steel (stainless?) if you can.
Many thanks for posting this thread, 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-) 8-)
Tom
Click to expand...


Thank you, Tom.

The steel is shim steel, not stainless, which is why the timber is wrapped in baking parchment and kitchen foil to prevent the steel staining the wood and keeping the steam and temperature in.

https://www.chronos.ltd.uk/product/steel-shim-rolls-6-x-100-linear-code-77-316-480/

The blanket I have is a 1200w 230 v version that comes with an analogue temperature controller, which I will remove and then connect the blanket to this machine.
 
Thanks for the advice, I must have a look at my blanky when we get the chance again to visit our folks.
Great to know Chronos make something suitable also.
Keep us updated!
Cheers
Tom
 
Well after two minor hiccups, the bally thing works!! :D

Hiccup No 1 - two of the three PT100 thermocouple wires I had wired the wrong way round.

Hiccup No 2 - that same thermocouple I had not placed near enough to the centre of the heating pads, and therefore optimum temperature, for the controller to properly undertake its autotune.

But once I had rectified those, it tuned itself. The tuning is where the controller decides when and how frequently to send pulses to the Solid State Relay and therefore manages the temperature as close to the set value as it can smoothly.

This not only autotuned the controller, but tested my wiring etc.

I have an outboard 2 x K Type thermometer to monitor the temperature of the pad separate to the onboard thermocouple, and the second of those two thermocouples monitors the ambient temperature outside the machine. I set the machine up with the 100 x150mm waist bending pad and arbitrarily set the value to 100 degrees C for the test and autotune.

D01FC954-BFF8-43CC-9C1B-0FEE6483ABD3.jpeg

Green is the Set Value and Red is the Process Value. I'm amazed how stable it keeps it.

Video Warning!!!!! The video below is only marginally more exciting than watching paint dry and is best viewed at YouTube size so that you can see the Output light showing the pulses and the outboard thermometer monitoring those pulses. But it demonstrates that I have a working machine. You also have Dolly Parton as a musical background from the workshop radio! :D (That's if the YT polis don't take it off for copyright issues!)

[youtube]6cTjc1D0Bhk[/youtube]
 
I got round to setting it all up and doing my first real test of the machine. I chose a piece of quarter sawn local ash that I had machined on the drum sander down to 2mm.

I apologise in advance for the video quality. Many of you will know I am no cameraman, director or editor. I didn't know how long it was going to take, so I set the camera to time lapse. If you find that to be a sensory overload, then you can chose 0.5 or even 0.25 from the speed settings at the lower right of the YouTube window, and that will be more or less real speed.

I was a little conservative with the temperature settings compared to those chosen by American manufacturers on YouTube, but I got to a point that I observed that if there was no more steam emanating, then the wood must be 'cooked', and that is the point to switch off and cool down.

I am pleased with the result.

[youtube]8BYXH-ohPmo[/youtube]
 
Well bugger me the mad doctor only went and done it.

Perfect and i assume completely repeatable?

Well done old bean.
 
Thanks, Gents.

Here's a screen grab from the video of the finished test piece.

Screenshot 2021-01-23 at 11.52.04.png

Just in case anyone visits this page with out having seen the video at the bottom of the previous page.
 
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