I have recently received my Buckeye BC-1 from Buckeye Roasters. This roaster has been reviewed multiple times on this forum before and I do not wish to duplicate those reviews however I do have my own points and photos/videos to add. I find the roaster to be very high quality and industrial. It is extremely easy to take apart, all of the panels are held on with allen set screws and none of the parts outside of the frame and drum look to be proprietary. All the parts are off the shelf and easily removed and should be easy to replace in the future if necessary. The welds are very clean and were done by a skilled welder. I have done 8 roasts so far and the machine has been easy to control and very maneuverable. I do have a few critiques however:

1) The stock thermocouples are too thick (5 or 6mm I believe) which makes them less responsive
2) In the newer models with 2 BT probes installed, the right BT probe is not a suitable location for monitoring BT. I also feel that ET probe would be more responsive and better located in upper right section of drum rather than in exhaust port where the mass of metal absorbs heat.
3)The fan control is very crude and only adjusts between 20-50% with very poor adjustability.

My solution to issues #1 and #2 was to replace the stock thermocouples with ones from omega. I ordered a dual thermocouple 1/8" diameter probe from Omega (part # TJ48-CASS-18U-4-SB-DUAL ) for BT which goes both to the temperature display on the machine and phidgets 1048. I also ordered two 1/16" Omega thermocouples, one for ET which I drilled and tapped in the upper right hand portion of the drum and one for MET (I prefer to call it Drum Temp because I use it to equate to the amount of heat in the drum) which is in the inch gap between the outside of the drum and the insulated top of the roaster. The screws which hold the front plate onto the roaster are positioned perfectly to access this space, so I placed the probe in the upper right screw hole.

While I had the roaster apart I took photos and decided to quickly fabricate a plexiglass cover and video the roaster with 100gm, 200gm, 300gm, 400gm, and 450gm charges. The goal of the Plexiglas front panel videos was to evaluate how the BT probe interacts with the beans and how full the drum is at higher charges. See those below:
















100gm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGone6BQh14

200gm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxLBQh94To

300gm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m73xTH1UwPQ

400gm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COC0pYSyq-8

450gm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWjAe3YP0bI

My next project will be to deal with the fan issue. The stock fan is a 1 phase AC fan, I am thinking that maybe change to a DC fan would be the best choice to improve adjustability

Just want to commend you on an outstanding project. I hope this inspires others to do a similar exercise on their machines if it's feasible. Good learning experiences to share with everyone!

Great write up and photos, solid looking machine! Many people have commented on the "less than ideal fan control" on their Chinese roasters. Slickrock figured out a way to re-wire the circuit for a wider range of adjustment. TJ-067 Fan Control Mod for Precise Control

Originally the BC-1 was the BC-300, a 300g machine. What is the size of the drum currently on the BC-1?

Thanks, hopefully others will take apart their roasters and show us the insides so we can compare. Here are some pictures from the plexiglass test for those that don't want to watch the videos

100gm


200gm


300gm


400gm


450gm


450gm machine off

hankua wrote:Great write up and photos, solid looking machine! Many people have commented on the "less than ideal fan control" on their Chinese roasters. Slickrock figured out a way to re-wire the circuit for a wider range of adjustment. TJ-067 Fan Control Mod for Precise Control

Originally the BC-1 was the BC-300, a 300g machine. What is the size of the drum currently on the BC-1?

I believe the machine is unchanged (except for a new manual damper and additional thermocouple locations [ right side poorly located additional bt probe and et in exhaust.] ).. However the drum is the same size, they just changed the name. That's one of the reasons I wanted to see how full the drum was at a 1lb charge. The burner power and fan seem like they should be more than adequate (although I have only done 300gm charges so far)

Nice write up and really amazing plexiglass experiment showing the beans in action! Kudos for the effort.

Having a decent adjustable air control will really help in the roasts and if you can do that electrically then go for it would be my recommendation. A magnehelic gauge would be a great benefit in trying to figure out what the control is really doing. I am using a Dwyer gauge.

hankua wrote:Great write up and photos, solid looking machine! Many people have commented on the "less than ideal fan control" on their Chinese roasters. Slickrock figured out a way to re-wire the circuit for a wider range of adjustment. TJ-067 Fan Control Mod for Precise Control

Originally the BC-1 was the BC-300, a 300g machine. What is the size of the drum currently on the BC-1?

And just a note, the Norths now have 3 phase blowers with VFD drives. Completely stable and a huge upgrade.

I did the slickrock mod on my old North 1k and it helped, but until I changed it to a VFD/3 Phase blower it wasn't much help. It was night and day after I changed.

I want to upgrade my BC-5MD with new thermocouples, however I have the following questions:

1. Could you provide the part number for the 1/16 probe, is it TJ48-CASS-116U-4-SB-DUAL?
2. Did you need to get compression fittings for the probes to got to 1/8 or 1/4 NPT to attach to roaster? If yes, could you share what you bought?
3. Did you have any issues connecticting the BT temp probe to both the OMRON temp controller on the BC-1 and phitget? Did you have any issues reading temperature on both Phidget and OMRON at the same time?

Thank you,

johnny4lsu wrote:And just a note, the Norths now have 3 phase blowers with VFD drives. Completely stable and a huge upgrade.

I did the slickrock mod on my old North 1k and it helped, but until I changed it to a VFD/3 Phase blower it wasn't much help. It was night and day after I changed.

I agree that the VFD + 3 Phase fan is the way to go... However a d/c fan should provide the same level of control without the added cost of the vfd, or am i mistaken?
Here is the specifics for the fan that comes with the bc1, they have a dc version (CY076DC) of the same fan, I wonder if this is an option.

blondica73 wrote:I want to upgrade my BC-5MD with new thermocouples, however I have the following questions:

1. Could you provide the part number for the 1/16 probe, is it TJ48-CASS-116U-4-SB-DUAL?
2. Did you need to get compression fittings for the probes to got to 1/8 or 1/4 NPT to attach to roaster? If yes, could you share what you bought?
3. Did you have any issues connecticting the BT temp probe to both the OMRON temp controller on the BC-1 and phitget? Did you have any issues reading temperature on both Phidget and OMRON at the same time?

Thank you,

The part number for the 1/16" version of the probe is
TJ48-CASS-116U-4-SB-DUAL
TJ-transition joint
48=48" wires
CA= k type thermocouple
SS= stainless steel probe
116= 1/16" probe
U=ungrounded
4=4"probe
SB- metal baided cable covering
Dual=Dual thermocouple
https://www.omega.com/pptst/TJ36-ICIN.html
I have become proficient with their coding structure without looking at the key on their site after this project, lol. You have to email them and they will build it for you.. It's not selectable on the page I linked. It costs $70 dns takes 2wks lead time.

I used the omegalok compression fittings
https://www.omega.com/pptst/BRLK_SSLK.html
The are not metric and require you to drill out and retap the threads. The version with the 1/8" npt thread works in the stock bt m8x1.25 location after it is drilled out with a Q drill bit and retaped in 1/8" npt. Obviously finding compression fittings that had metric theads or metric to standard adapters would be easier but I had a hell of a time finding any and I looked pretty hard. Maybe if someone knows the European version of McMaster Carr they can help.

The new dual probe BT works awesome, it was easy to wire in (the probe comes with two separate, stainless braided 48" wires from the back of the probe and both my omron and phidgets read almost exactly the same (the phidgets readout is delayed a couple seconds compared to the omron d/t artisan software)

Absolutely an amazing post!

It looks like the probe would be okay at 200g

Where did you relocate to?