Heat treating oven

[Rangerdave]

Has anyone seen this in action? I am looking for an oven instead of the gas forge to get a more consistent temp for heat treating. Saw this and thought price is good but is it good? thought maybe someone has heard of it.


http://www.sugarcreekind.com/kilns-knife-kilns-c-273_312.html

Thanks
RD

[Rich Hale]

Seems like a fair price but I wouild want one that I can set to reach a particular temperature and that it is easy to change that temp when I need to.

[timgunn1962]

I'd take on board Rich's electronic control suggestion and raise it to a ramp/soak (programmable) controller. Unfortunately, it tends to add quite a bit to the cost.

There's generally quite a bit of fiddling about to get the temperature right with manual power controllers, and the oven temperature can still vary with ambient temperature. On a tight budget and with reasonably simple carbon steels, it'll certainly get the job done.

For Stainless though, you'll struggle to find anyone who regrets paying the extra for a ramp/soak controller.

If the initial cost really needs to be kept down, it's worth asking either the manufacturer, or whoever you are thinking of buying from, whether there's a retrofit kit available to upgrade from the manual system to programmable control. It's not difficult to source the controller and a contactor or SSR to do it yourself, but a properly-engineered, manufacturer-supported system has advantages.

I've built 5 HT ovens. There's nothing particularly difficult or technically demanding about it and there's certainly no reason I can see for any company to make an oven that performs significantly less well than any of the big-name offerings.

I'm pretty sure the thing that will make the difference between good and excellent is the controller.

I don't know what your gas forge setup is like for HT, but I'd say a Don Fogg drum setup will perform about as well as an electric HT oven with manual control. If you are only going to use carbon steels, and cash is tight, it might be an option.