Best place to measure temp / PID Quickmill Eliane

[Kristi]

Any ideas as to the best place to stick a tc to PID an Eliane? The hole where the stock thermostat goes seems to vary a lot from top to bottom.

tia!
Kristi

[HB]

You can read my Cliffnotes for PIDing Isomac Amica / Zaffiro, which includes links to related discussions on the thermocouple placement. I used one fashioned to fit snugly in the thermowell with good results. Michael Teahan created Marshall's Bionic Zaffiro and custom-mounted the TC.

[Kristi]

You can read my Cliffnotes for PIDing Isomac Amica / Zaffiro, which includes links to related discussions on the thermocouple placement. I used one fashioned to fit snugly in the thermowell with good results. Michael Teahan created Marshall's Bionic Zaffiro and custom-mounted the TC.

Thanks Dan, I'll go read that link, but did you attend to any particular height in that thermowell, and did you fill it with silicon heat transfer stuff??

First shot this am was darn good! Nice machine! - easy

tia!!!
Kristi

EDIT: okay looked at those - definitely not going to drill a hole in the boiler but the air space in the thermowell concerns me - saw one idea to fill it with copper BBs. And still wondering about the silicon heat transfer stuff...

Thanks!
Kristi

[HB]

okay looked at those - definitely not going to drill a hole in the boiler but the air space in the thermowell concerns me - saw one idea to fill it with copper BBs. And still wondering about the silicon heat transfer stuff...

Given the proximity of the thermowell to the heating element and incoming water, I didn't worry about air space. The boiler needs a couple minutes to stabilize after each shot anyway. You can speed up its recovery time by cutting off the TC input line during a shot to reduce the PID's overshoot.

[Kristi]

Thanks Dan. There is some consensus that the side of the boiler is the best place so I stuck the thermostat probe there under the insulation and it does seem a bit more stable. Guess the idea is a tc held down by a big hose clamp and a bit of thermal grease. I do like the E61.

[barry]

Any ideas as to the best place to stick a tc to PID an Eliane? The hole where the stock thermostat goes seems to vary a lot from top to bottom.

got a photo and some dimensions on that thermowell?

[Kristi]

got a photo and some dimensions on that thermowell?

No photo - looks like a bolt - well is about 5 3/4"deep and about 1/4" diam.

I just stuck the tc on the bottom of the well, with insulation in the remaining wellspace, just to see what I would see.

EDIT: reacts much more rapidly to the heater. Needs much lower temp target on PID to get same temp on head.

[cpl593h]

I did the same thing to my Zaffiro that Michael Teahan did for Marshall Fuss - I drilled and tapped the boiler. The attached photo gives the best layout I could do in MS paint. The perspective is from the back of the machine in the foreground to the front of the machine in the background. The TC probe is the gray line in the back left, the heater coil is represented by the brown cylinder in the center. Be careful with placement - I put mine in a bad spot and it took some work for the bent TC jacket to not hit the hot thermosyphon pipe. It should be farther to the left than it actually is, but it works and it's in a good spot within the boiler. I had to drain the boiler, remove it from the machine, drill a hole, tap the hole, and place the compression fitting in. It was kind of a hassle as you can imagine.

The response time seems very fast, especially since the tc probe is grounded in the jacket. The temperature differential between temp reading and shot temp is small, with a range of about 406-412.

[Kristi]

Yes, I've seen that diagram before...

I am not likely to drill my boiler as I see no need. The response at the bottom of the well with insulation on top of it seems much faster than on the side, outside. - closer to the heater so the heater isn't so likely to overshoot as much.

I could perhaps improve my present setup by putting arctic silver paste on the bottom and pressing down on the tc with a rigid plastic rod that is somehow spring-loaded. Probably wouldn't be worth the effort.