Hi all,

I am going to purchase a HUKY 500 and I know there is a ton of stuff on this site concerning this roaster but I am rather lost when reading a lot of it. I have been roasting for the past 5 months on a Sonofresco 1 lb Fluid bed roaster which has had some major issues and left me with out a roaster for 2months now and solving these issues has become more of headache than anything with the company unfortuenatly. I am giving up on this roaster and looking to learn about drum roasting. The problem is that I know very little about this art and am lost when it comes to talks about BT, ET and MET. I get what they are abbreviations for but really have no idea how to read this information and apply it to producing great profiles. How do these temps come into play in a drum roast profile and is the MET really worth it on the HUKY? I have seen a few folks suggest that it really is not a big deal on this roaster. Besides these questions I am looking at the following out fit:
-Solid Drum
-Faster motor with an extra ordered as well
-IR Stove (forums suggest this a more than adequate option but does it run off butane or propane? and what connections do I want, threaded or barbed?)
-TC's for the necessary temp inputs
-Extra Tray and fan with exhaust connection
-301 if only two TC's are recommended otherwise a 309 for all three
And I think that is about it unless I am missing something here others stongly suggest.

Where can I get the profiling software?
What thermometer to attach TC's to?
And what do I need to get to hook the TC's up to the thermometer and what connects the thermometer to my computer?

I am sorry if this stuff has been covered in detail, I justt have not come across it quite yet but if you know somewhere I could go to read more that would be awesome. Also if there is somewhere I can go to learn about profiling on this machine before it gets here that would be awesome as well. I know there are few questions here and I just want to thank you all in advance for taking the time to respond.

Ron

Here are a couple of answers (or at least responses).

Although I have both motors and both drums, I have only used the perforated drum and the slow motor and I will probably sell the solid and faster as I see no use for them.

As to ET, BT and MET on the Huky, I find them all to be useful, but MET most important of them all for determining charge temperature. I wouldn't be without any of them, as they play together to give you a complete picture of what is going on inside the roaster.

My Huky has 3 thermocouples attached to Artisan via a Phidget 1048 (http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?product_id=1048). The Phidget comes from Canada. Artisan you can download for free from here https://code.google.com/p/artisan/wiki/Downloads?tm=2

The IR burner from Mr. Li (or at least the one I got) runs on propane.

Okay, I've forgotten the rest of the questions, so that will have to do for a start.

SJM,

thanks for the quick reply. Is that phidget a direct connection to your computer or does it hook up to a thermometer that has probes attached to it like a center 309 or something similar? I keep seeing pics with digital thermometers that the TC's are hooked up to.

The three thermocouples from the Huky go into three of the four terminals on the Phidget (I removed the mini plugs and threaded the bare wires in.....there is a thread about that episode somewhere here), and the Phidget connects by USB to the laptop (USB came with the Phidget).

Ok that makes sense and I am assuming that the software will have a place showing you updated temps for each TC. So what is the point of the thermometers like the center 301, are these more for those not running software and are not connecting the TC's to their computers? Do you know of any "Artisan how to's" explaining how to use the system on this forum. I am new to this obviously and just want to have a good round turn on everything before I purchase and try to start roasting with out any direction.

Thanks again,

Ron

Did it come with the clear case around it?

ETA: Nevermind, I see the case is $8 extra

I can't answer your question about the thermometers that Mr. Li offers, but there seem to be others here who are using them, so hopefully someone else can advise you.

As to Artisan? Artisan is not intuitive. It is powerful and it is free and it does a great job, but it is harder than the Huky itself to master, or at least that is the case for me. On the other hand, having Artisan to report back to me what was happening when the roast was going is one of the reasons that the Huky is so much easier than any roaster I have ever used before. I don't have to guess; everything is there is red blue and green lines.

You can probably tell that I am completely enamored of this roaster set-up.

I am pretty excited about the setup as well, just trying to get as far ahead of the learning curve as possible before getting into the actual roasting.

RonnyG wrote:Ok that makes sense and I am assuming that the software will have a place showing you updated temps for each TC. So what is the point of the thermometers like the center 301, are these more for those not running software and are not connecting the TC's to their computers?

I have a Amprobe TMD-56 (monitoring BT and MET) and I like having the Amprobe display - it shows the temps with decimals, fast and reliable, regardless probenoises or computerfailure. Also nice to have if I would like to roast without setting up a computer.
I find that I check my temps on the fast Amprobe display and the curves/RoR on the computerscreen.

What version of artisan do you recommend. I have a mac book pro that I will be using and there are several versions from 0.7.4 to 0.8.0