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offcntrBeen sick and miserable all week, as what initially seemed to be a very bad allergy attack morphed into a persistent head/chest cold. No fever, oddly enough, but buckets of snot, irritated throat, cough, the works. Fortunately a little ahead of schedule making pots for my next firing, so only had a little studio time, throwing one last batch of pie plates (we're down to three in inventory) and tall mugs. Mostly, though, I blew my nose. Constantly.
Finally started feeling humanish Thursday, so went down to the studio to get organized for glazing and see if I could figure out what was wrong with the left electric kiln. Apparently, it'd been blowing a circuit breaker before reaching cone 6, making it useless as a glaze kiln. This is the one I found, nearly pristine, at an estate sale a few years back, so I didn't think there was anything wrong with it, but you never know what a year in a busy shop will do.
Karen said they'd installed a new breaker, and wondered whether we should swap the right and left kilns to see if that might narrow the problem down a little. Thought I'd do some lower-impact detective work first.
First thing I did was open the kiln control box. (Well, the first first thing I did was make sure the circuit breaker was off.) The new computer-driven Skutt kilns don't actually show you much--well-labeled leads plug into a well-designed switch block, but all the actual circuit boards are hidden behind a sheet-metal and insulation barrier. Still, everything was plugged into its proper place, no signs of heat or wear.
So I pulled out the plug; here I saw a clue. The nylon faceplate showed a little toasty color around one of the three prongs. I took the faceplate off, but didn't see any further sign of damage in the wires or connectors inside the plug, so set that aside.
Took a flashlight to the outlet itself next. The contacts in the slot corresponding to the over heated prong were black, corroded with copper oxide, so I opened up the box, at which point the problem was obvious. One of the electrical wires had overheated, melting insulation back a good inch from the outlet and frying the bakelite itself. The copper wires were variously pink from the surface melting and resolidifying, and black from corrosion. Messy.
So I disconnected the plug, cutting the wire on that side, as the setscrew was welded solid, and took it to the nearest hardware store.
Where they didn't recognize it, didn't have it, didn't think they were even manufactured anymore. Tried to sell me a different 50A/240V outlet, and when I said the plug wouldn't fit, brought out a clothes dryer power cord. No, guys; just no.
The nearest electrical supply store was in Whitaker, about a half mile further, but they had no trouble rustling up a replacement receptacle. Which didn't fit the circuit box, when I got it back to the Club. Thought I was gonna have to make another round of errands when Jon reminded me that we had a stash of used electrical bits on a shelf in the kiln room, and one of them turned out to be an outlet box in the correct size, complete with a matching faceplate. Success! I pulled out some slack in the cable, cut a couple of inches off the three leads and re-stripped the insulation. Took three hours, all told, and I had to disconnect and reconnect that outlet three times before it all fit together, but in the end, we had both kilns running again. Total cost? $15.26.
Finally started feeling humanish Thursday, so went down to the studio to get organized for glazing and see if I could figure out what was wrong with the left electric kiln. Apparently, it'd been blowing a circuit breaker before reaching cone 6, making it useless as a glaze kiln. This is the one I found, nearly pristine, at an estate sale a few years back, so I didn't think there was anything wrong with it, but you never know what a year in a busy shop will do.
Karen said they'd installed a new breaker, and wondered whether we should swap the right and left kilns to see if that might narrow the problem down a little. Thought I'd do some lower-impact detective work first.
First thing I did was open the kiln control box. (Well, the first first thing I did was make sure the circuit breaker was off.) The new computer-driven Skutt kilns don't actually show you much--well-labeled leads plug into a well-designed switch block, but all the actual circuit boards are hidden behind a sheet-metal and insulation barrier. Still, everything was plugged into its proper place, no signs of heat or wear.
So I pulled out the plug; here I saw a clue. The nylon faceplate showed a little toasty color around one of the three prongs. I took the faceplate off, but didn't see any further sign of damage in the wires or connectors inside the plug, so set that aside.
Took a flashlight to the outlet itself next. The contacts in the slot corresponding to the over heated prong were black, corroded with copper oxide, so I opened up the box, at which point the problem was obvious. One of the electrical wires had overheated, melting insulation back a good inch from the outlet and frying the bakelite itself. The copper wires were variously pink from the surface melting and resolidifying, and black from corrosion. Messy.
So I disconnected the plug, cutting the wire on that side, as the setscrew was welded solid, and took it to the nearest hardware store.
Where they didn't recognize it, didn't have it, didn't think they were even manufactured anymore. Tried to sell me a different 50A/240V outlet, and when I said the plug wouldn't fit, brought out a clothes dryer power cord. No, guys; just no.
The nearest electrical supply store was in Whitaker, about a half mile further, but they had no trouble rustling up a replacement receptacle. Which didn't fit the circuit box, when I got it back to the Club. Thought I was gonna have to make another round of errands when Jon reminded me that we had a stash of used electrical bits on a shelf in the kiln room, and one of them turned out to be an outlet box in the correct size, complete with a matching faceplate. Success! I pulled out some slack in the cable, cut a couple of inches off the three leads and re-stripped the insulation. Took three hours, all told, and I had to disconnect and reconnect that outlet three times before it all fit together, but in the end, we had both kilns running again. Total cost? $15.26.