jammin wrote: MillCity roasters offers top tier customer support in my experience. I've spent hours on the phone with them prior to purchasing my roaster & post sale support. They have called me back on holidays & Sunday nights as well as over-nighted parts. They are honest & do not sugar coat or mislead.

100% of my experience with them is this thread. So either the management/owners should be informed about this thread, take appropriate actions, or the management/owner is the one posting in this thread, which would suggest that their customer service may be excellent despite his example.

jammin wrote:The drum on the BC is substantially different than the TJ-066. So is the fan & fan control. I'm unclear why you would be so shocked that it's performance would differ? My TJ-066 in stock form does does not have any type of uneven heating and for you to throw a blanket statement out there like that is disingenuous. Selecting a roaster in this class is already challenging and it would be beneficial to the community for you to not make false generalizations like that.

To help you understand better & since you have been asking for specifics - here are some of the major differences between the drum of the 2:

TJ: 174.97CI = π*2.95^2*6.4 @ 4mm thickness. Additional reversing vanes.
BC: 112.36CI = π*2.55^2*5.5 @ 3mm thickness.

So not only is the drum almost 50% larger in volume it probably weighs that much more as well. Combine the substantially greater thermal mass with it's overpowered, precision controlled fan and it's obvious that *maybe* the TJ doesn't have the issues you claim it does

I'm really not sure why Millcity would need a customer to chime in with specifics of their roasters when they should have an understanding and be able to discuss the specifics intelligently themselves... Or they can choose not to, no one asked them to participate in this thread and no negative comment was made about any of their products. In short, they are big boys and shouldn't need you to defend them, their behavior in this thread speaks for itself; however I believe you misunderstand the point of this thread.

1) I have not claimed that I have practically in my roasts or experimentally observed or proven that the drum of the bc roaster or north roaster is unevenly heated or has a problem. This is an esperimental thread for those of a scientific mind who wish to explore the physics of whats going on inside these roasters and possibly how to improve upon them. If you look at the following picture and video that a user has posted of a TJ-66 roaster you can see that there is in fact significant overlap in between burners and when considering the relatively low thermal conductivity of stainless steel it would make sense that the drum is not evenly heated. This is not brand specific but design specific to the circular burners and single layer drums.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iys181W8 ... efault.jpg[/img]

If true, this leaves room for improvement.. Even if not necessary for a good roast. You would not know whether your drum had uneven heating or not unless you had taken measurements or performed thermal imaging on it. The main point of the heat shield was to increase convective vs conductive heating with the side benefit of heating the drum more evenly. Scott Rao seems to support this idea in his book where he strongly recommends double layered drums or indirectly heated drum roasters.

Im sorry that this has devolved into a product x vs product y discussion as it is meant to address roaster design. Any further discussion comparing the bc roaster to the north roaster should be taken to a new thread.

Yeah I'll bow out. You seem to be on a mission. Good luck

Reminder: Guidelines for productive online discussion and Vendor participation in the forums. They are pretty clear, so I won't bore you by pointing out how this thread is problematic. Closed for review.