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Burnout kiln hooked up

A project log for Elysium Max Exoskeleton

Exoskeleton suit replica from the movie Elysium in Autodesk Inventor, 3D printed and investment cast out of Aluminum

valVal 08/17/2017 at 19:432 Comments

The new burnout kiln has finally been hooked up to 30 A / 240 V outlet, which I routed to a fusible safety switch, which then goes across the wall and the ceiling to the breaker box. After so much time spent routing EMT (electrical metallic tubing) conduits, my brain is randomly focusing on them everywhere I go and naming the components. I also had to cut off the kiln's power plug and replace it with another, NEMA 10-50.

The homebrew ventilation visible here was a result of intense labor to make a 3D model of the duct in Inventor, unfold it using sheetmetal functionality, export the sketch to Illustrator, and finally print it at 5% size. I projected the print using a tracer projector and got it to a focus state where 1" on Inventor drawing was equal to 1" on the wall, then traced on sheet metal and cut the patterns out with sheet metal scissors. Common sheet metal screws were used to assemble the final patterns after re-folding them with clamps.

Finally the switch was pulled and nothing exploded. The kiln emitted a long beep and the Sentry controller came online, burning with a demonic red glow. Today I am starting the first over-night (13-hour) burnout.

Discussions

Jarrett wrote 08/17/2017 at 20:01 point

Check out BigPrint to do the large stuff without messing around with projectors:

https://woodgears.ca/bigprint/

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Val wrote 08/18/2017 at 02:39 point

That was my first thought (Adobe Illustrator can do the same thing, no need for other software), but I think that taping the sheets of paper up and tracing through them would have taken about the same amount of time/effort. Actually the first thing I tried is FedEx Office, but their customer service made a mistake and delayed my job, so I cancelled it and rolled my own.

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