No worries! Gave me the motivation to go and clean up my bookmarks!
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Components look good, 25 amp should give a fast heat up.
If you buy aluminum from the machine company, get them to skim the two surfaces that will come together, you will be surprised how uneven the surfaces are on blank stock.
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I’m wondering if I would really need two PIDs, I’ve read build guides where people only used one and just trusted both plates to be close to same temp (and verified they were).
The only cartridge heaters available to ship from Canada are the 80mm 300w ones. Not even sure if one PID and relay could handle them? Would also require a larger set of plates than 2.5". So 3"x5"?
For the plates the shop is closed today I will try to call Monday and get a quote. I don’t know if they even have 1" bar stock but they’ve had anything else I’ve ever ordered from them.
Not as enthusiastic about it today as I was last night, lol. Just seems like a whole lot of shit to source to try to get the right stuff not to mention it’s still gonna cost me $150+ when my current $15 straightener rig works decently. I’ve been getting results with it, but it’s starting to break apart again and I was just wishing there was a decent upgrade path that didn’t cost 10x more than just buying another flat iron and retrofitting it to my vise rig.
But I’m really digging the rosin lately, seems to be the only way I can actually get the medical benefits I seek from this plant.
Which reminds me, time to go do a dab and play with my plants:
Day 55, still ~ 2 weeks on these I think
Day 25 these new ones seem to have some energy
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Those two plants near the middle have some kind of tip thing going on, is their PH OK?
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Nutes may have been running a little hot I dialed it back to 80% this morning but not really worried about it I like to push pretty hard these plants can take it lol.
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Continuing down the rosin press rabbit hole, I’ve been looking for the cheapest options possible, as that’s what I do, and have happened across a cheaper PID option:
But it’s not exactly a clone of the Inkbird, and all the info out there for wiring PIDs up seems to be all about the Inkbird and not these REX-C100 units which have different terminals in the back. One of the reviews said they had a hard time figuring out the chinglish language instructions so I’m kinda weary of going this route, but it would allow me to do a dual PID setup, as it stays within my set budget for this project.
For the heaters, it appears as though the only cartridge heaters on Amazon right now are 80mm, they say they are 300w each (which is actually too much for this project) but the reviews say they’re actually 150w which would be perfect. The problem here is that they are a little bit longer than 3 inches, and the biggest set of plates I want to make would be 3x5, so I’m wondering if it would be okay if 1/4" or so of the heater stuck out of the hole in the plate with maybe a silicone straw around it or something for safety?
Here are the heaters:
The gears keep on turning, I’m really hoping for a good price on 1x3 bar stock when I call the machine shop tomorrow.
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Just realized I could put these through the sides of the plates instead of the back and have zero issues. That’s why I make rants like above sometimes just need to put my ideas somewhere tangible.
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You beat me to it… should work out sideways… as for the PID, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out the wiring. Its what, six wires max? Two for power, two for the thermocouple and two to the solid state relay.
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Now that I’m looking at it, it looks pretty straight forward to interpret one from the other. I wonder why a couple people said they couldn’t figure it out.
REX-C100:
Inkbird ITC106-VH:
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Seems pretty clearly labeled to me…
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Called the machine shop first thing this morning and left a message asking for a quote. The guy called me back confused, he thought I was looking for steel flat bar I told him no I was looking for aluminum, he said he’d check if he had it then he hung up the phone.
Called again got an answer machine and waited all day for a call back, nothing.
So there goes that idea. Its not something you can just order online either without going way over budget, so I might have to wave the white flag here.
Plants!!
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I’ve seen people totally confused by the diagram on the back like it’s some kind of Klingon instead of a basic circuit.
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Check out these folks if they are near you.
Cheers
G
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Yeah metal supermarkets would be a last resort, but impossible right now anyways, as Nova Scotia is under complete lockdown, and we are not allowed to travel outside of our communities.
Doesn’t matter though, I received a call this morning from the machine shop, $35 for two 3x5 plates, cut. That seems like a really good price, so I placed the order which will be ready for pickup sometime today.
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Funny as how I can spit and hit you, and we arnt that locked down as you. I’m surprised NS is taking such drastic precautions.
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Thats a pretty good price. Think about how much pride you will have when you say, “I built this”.
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I dug out the old press frame I had laying around, will have to give it a fresh coat of paint.
And I picked up the 3x5 plates, a little rough but I forgot to ask them to skim em down. Nothing a little elbow grease and (steel wool?) won’t fix.
Now to order up the brains and gather up some hardware.
It turns out my porta-power jack is fubared, and the bottle jack I have is pretty beat up and only 2 ton, so I guess I’ll have to buy one of those too, gonna end up over budget, as usual, but hey it looks like I’ll have a pretty decent press setup when all is said and done.
Now I’m wondering about these 80mm cartridge heaters, am I going to be able to shove them the long way into these 5" plates, roughly an inch past their sheathing, so they are centered inside the plates? If I can only shove them in 80mm that’s going to leave 2" of one end without a heater in it…
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Sandpaper and a sheet of glass for leveling
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How does that work exactly? They are perfectly level though and sit together perfectly flush just the couple scuffs on em I want to try to buff out for cosmetic purposes only because I like things that look nice.
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Even though discussed it over on discord, might as well post similar here for others, glass acts as a really flat sanding surface to sand on so it’s a quick and easy way to get something pretty decently flat if required.
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