Hi.

They don't have a vendor in the US. They ship directly from Taiwan.

The price I paid for the Quest M3 Roaster ~ 6 months ago was $850 + $120 (shipping) + [$30 (money order expense)] = $1000. But don't know the current price.

Company: Fonglong Enterprise
Email: fairy0025@hotmail.com
Address: Wuncian, Kaohsiung
Taiwan 833, Taiwan
Phone:886-07-7331112
Fax:886-07-7337730

Cheers

Important good finding for owners of Quest M3 roaster

This is more about the intake than the exhaust. I got very good heat transfer using the fan all the way. However this requires a warm air ambient temperature like 70F. If the room temperature is 60F the heat transfer by convection is very poor.

Now here comes the trick. You can get super high heat transfer at 60F room temperature too! If you put a kitchen towel making a semi circle around the intake hole, you create a micro climate that reaches 78F even when the room temperature is 60! My measurements of delta BT are super high and the heat transfer is very high. This will allow to roast very sensitive (low density) beans at very low MET in semi-cold room temperature. You could also use this trick to increase the charge (load) while keeping a fast roast time. Don't block the hole! Restrictions in the hole decrease the deltaBT. The more air it gets the better, but make it suck the air from the direction of the drum/walls.

Here is my picture. As you can see, if doesn't have to be in a neat arrangement. If you want, you could play with the towel till you get a a max reading in the micro climate area using a thermometer. Roaster needs to be already warm.



Regards

EDIT: During an actual normal roast, the air intake temp will reach the 130Fs in the microclimate area with ambient temp of 67F.

This is a little bit more elegant solution though you could just take a 2-3/4" wide long partition and bend it around.





Cheers

Hi Jim.

I think the heat is coming from the little black cooling fan and not the walls. Oops never mind. I went to check it and it is a blow-in fan (not blow-out) jeje.

Now that I know that the fan is for blowing cool air, I made me a new baffle (partition) to take the fan out of the area (don't want to blow hot air inside the motor box). This is what happens now. It works very well as before. The heat in that area builds up slowly, so if you uncover the baffle, all the stored heat gets lost. Put it back, and the thermometer reading in that area gets higher and higher and so does the deltaBt. Once you remove the baffle and then put it back you start from zero building up heat. I am scratching my head.

Cheers

It makes a lot of sense. I remember you said something about that a while back.

I had a thermocouple meter placed in the intake area and I was reading temperatures in the 130Fs and 140Fs (with the baffle). I think the exhaust temp is in the high 200Fs. So there is a lot of heat lost in the air through the surfaces.

Hi again.

I did yesterday more roasts. It seems that it helps not doing a good job covering the area completely. It needs breathing.

The thermocouple I used to check the temperature gets hotter slowly with time. It may be getting hotter by radiation, so that would explain why it is so slow. The surface of the towel or baffle also gets warmer.

The best performance of deltaBT is when doing a fast dive from high temperatures. I guess there is more residual heat in the intake and the roaster. So warm up the roaster to high temp, then if you need to start at a lower temp do a dive. A fast dive is achieved by cutting the power and opening both the drop door and the chimney door.

The help from the baffle or a towel is not that big if doing the roast in a hot room. It has a bigger effect when the room is cold (low performance) when compared to the results of roasting in a hot room. When the room is cold using a baffle/towel has a bigger impact.

Since the time I started using a static cling to filter the air around the basket, I've never had to clean the fan blades yet. It does an excellent job but I guess it affects the vacuum power. But the opposite is also true. If the blades are kept clean then the better the performance.

Cheers