thanks for the info!! Good luck on the roasts! Will you have to do any for seasoning the drum?

rr_coffee wrote:Yup exactly why I was asking. Trying to determine the best exterior cover for the vent(temporary and removed when roasting or something to withstand higher heats). Also looking at fire resistant insulation board to hold the exhaust.

This is what was used by the previous owner of my 1kg for the hot side. (Cooling tray vented separately.)
https://www.amazon.com/Noritz-WT4-H-8-1 ... B008JG0HYG

If your using enough air to evacuate smoke I see no need to vent the cooling tray also.

rr_coffee wrote:thanks for the info!! Good luck on the roasts! Will you have to do any for seasoning the drum?

Russ, BC Roasters doesn't mention seasoning the drum, but I'm screwing up the early roasts, so I'll consider it seasoned by the time I get a roast I like the Artisan curves of
But I've been driving the roasts into second crack, which isn't as far as Mill City Roasters shows, but I figure it will help a bit.

I have now done 4 roasts. I do one a day so I have the consistency of a cold roaster. Once I get that figured out, I'll try back to back.
With CarefreeBuzzBuzz's Artisan Quick Start Guide, I figured out how to set it to automatically mark Dry End, so that worked well tonite on roast #4.
I also made a checklist to guide me thru setup, and the roast.
Warmup to 450 BT, then flame off to charge at 400, then gas at .5-.6 kpa to TP looks to work well. Roast #4 at 600 gram had a TP of 180F at 1:14.
But, I forgot to increase gas at TP, so the roast went downhill from there (didn't have that on the checklist!). So, I used the roast to see the the affects of gas and damper changes. And drove it to 437F for some drum seasoning.
Here's a few things I'm seeing:

• .5-.6 kpa is the lowest I can set the gas. Below that, the igniter comes on and shuts off the flame after a few seconds.

• With it plumbed into my LPG manifold (that supplies my boiler to heat the house), the roaster drops .1kpa when the boiler starts (pretty often in the 0F and colder weather we're having)

• With the damper at 4 (what I perceive as medium high per the cigarette lighter test), I get a bit of chaff going into the exhaust duct. Is that normal? I vacuum out the chaff collector after each roast. I've been starting the roast at 2, then increment up to 3 into FC. Then 4 after drop to help cool the roaster.

And, what temp does everyone cool the roaster to before shutting down? I've been going to ~125F.
Close dump door, or leave it open?

Still lots to learn, but learning from my outcomes, and your feedback, I'll get there.

Chaff in exhaust duct, to much fan.

I use damper 2 3.3/FAN @ 6 and don't touch it. Just another variable to leave out.

I usually wait until my machine hits around 125 until I shut it down.

for the Arc with similar damper I keep mine around ~2-2.5 depending on how temps are going towards the end of the roast I might open it up more. Right now I am starting to play with drum speed.

Here's a few mods I've done.
First was to remove the "foot" from the cooling fan motor. Both fans have the foot, but only the cooling tray one needs it.


On the cooling fan foot, I moved the rubber piece closer to the edge so it sits on my tool chest top better. Simply drilled a hole and tapped it for the 6mm 1.0 threads, and spun it on. Now it doesn't use the nut on the back side.


And today, I finished running a new wire and installing a 240 volt plug so I don't need to use the transformer Randy includes with his roasters. I had an empty 240 volt 20 amp breaker, so I ran a 12/3 wire from the panel and attached a box/conduit by the roaster. A 6-20 receptacle is wired for 240V, and the GFI in the left half of the box is of course 120V. In a few weeks a 7 foot kitchen cabinet/counter top will be on that left wall, so the propane hose will lay on that.

Edit - saved the profile to full size .png, but still seems blurry. 2/20/21.

Here's my roast from last nite. I'm going to let it sit over the weekend, and try it in the moca pot Monday.
And thanks again to CarefreeBuzzBuzz for the Aritsan Quickstart Guide. I figured out the Phase, Stats and grid. Still need to work on the Phase colors though. And I added several alarms to pop up gas adjusting reminders.
I've settled on the damper at 3 for the entire roast - seems to clear smoke and chaff. I set 3.5 after drop to increase flow a bit for cooling.
I tried increasing gas at TP to 2.0, but think its too much, since I hit BT 300 F in 4:15. I think that should be about 5:00, correct?
I'm doing better working the gas into FC to prevent a RoR increase, but this dropped into FC (is this a crash I read about?).
Any suggestions on gas management to help move thru FC and into SC with a better RoR curve?

Dry End between 4-5 works IMO.

It's really hard to go to second crack without that flick. I would say your crash isn't huge here.
There is thread on roasting dark that is fairly recent that you should read. Hints to tame the crash and flick in a longer roast.
Is roasting darker about increased heat or longer time?

I encourage you to try roasting some without going to SC and see if you like it.

You can run Analyzer on the roast and see where your adjustments are vs reaction of the BT.

What process did you use to post the profile? I am not able to zoom in enough to read numbers.

Michael