Pellet heads!! What's up today?

If I had to guess B: shear pin snapped the bolt head and nut / the body of shear pin is still stuck inside, dragging one of the augers - I'd check that first.

 

Piping competitions in MA tomorrow anyone going?

 

Belt driven auger? Is it loose?

 

One of my former neighbors was good at breaking those shear pins, never learned to avoid rocks in the driveway.

 

Rocks have feelings,too!!

 

I used to find some small vine. Doesn’t take much.

 

Neighbor has one of those old,military blower trucks(oshkosh?),went to use it 2 winters ago,was froze to ground.Thinks he snapped a front halfshaft.Is partner/buddy(1/2 owner) is coming out this summer to repair it,bringing halfshafts.Well,last summer,neighbor(whose property it is sitting on) went to move it,as it is sinking into his yard.Fired it up,does not even have 2wd,something is broken in the trans,or transfer case.Could not even move it with his backhoe,sunk in so bad.His "partner" is gonna be really upset,when he gets here.None of us mention this to him,as,he is a mechanic,and has not taken the time to diagnose it.I was told,do not know if true,when running,both engines,it uses over 100 bucks of fuel an hour.

 

Winter astro van died,hard bumps in snow covered dirt road,turns out another neighbor tried using his new/used loader to plow.Been too cold and nasty to diagnose/repair.As long as I can limp my broke plow truck along,I can use the summer van.Might have to move it over on property,right about this time of year we get lots of snow,and looks like blowing in tomorrow.Wish I had a shed or garage.

 

Both shear pins are whole and in one piece.

Yes, it is belt driven. It could be loose but I gotta split the machine in two just to check that it looks like.

I got the housing off, the gas drained and the spark plug unplugged. Then got to looking at what all I would have to take off to turn the beast upside down (the "maintenance position" as described in the manual), I decided I probably am not up to the job. Will need to find a place that will pick it up, fix it and deliver it. Probably not looking at a quick turn around time this time of year either. Luckily no big storms forecast for the next week.

 

Oh,140 miles away,guy sold an enviro empress,needed control board,300 bucks.Was same day van died.Gone next morning.I sure missed that one.

 

Bummer,BB

 

Yes they do.

 

Still have your pet rock,Smokey?

 

Spent some time going over the schematic on the new controller.

Had some issues with things working a tad bit goofy.

A few serious minutes looking at the layout it became obvious that one of the relays was causing issues.

I tracked it down to an error in my design.

The relay in question is just down stream from the "Latchout relay" (Stops a restart in the event of a power outage or an overtemp ....

The Solid state relays pass current even when they are in the OFF/OPEN state.

About 6mA at 120 volts.

Caused odd things to happen.

I jumpered around the relay and the beast works sweeeeeeeeeeeet.

I ordered up a mechanical relay to swap into the spot.

Spoke with the engineers at Little Fuse Co. this morning and told them what was happening and what I thought the issue was.... He concurred 100% Mechanical relay on its way....

Testing now with the relay jumper'd out of the system.

Working like a charm.

Doing exactly what it should be doing.

I may swap some different resistors into the heat selector resistor block to get the burn times closer to where I want them.

#3 is about right at 5 seconds off and 3 seconds on

The light under the cardboard box is an LED that simulates the auger motor (Easy to see if it's working)

 

Never had a pet rock.

 

Me either,lol,but one of my younger sisters did.

 

Snowy, you are hot chit. This is awesome. Really envious. My electronics skills are definitely stone age in comparison. Especially like the led to give you auger movement feedback.

 

Thanks.

I just wanted to be able to visually see the auger timing, and a lamp is easy and very simple.
Getting the timing right in the groove is paramount.

I need a tad more than the stock 1.4 seconds of feed time due to the consistency of the nut shells.

The timer I chose will allow from 1/4 second to 5 seconds of auger on time and from 1/10 second to 10 seconds off time (Burner heat setting)

Being able to tweak the draft fan speed from 70 volts up to nearly full line voltage will help immensely with getting a perfect fire. (Having the adjustment right on the panel is just the cats sass...

My old board has the draft fan voltage stuck at about 100 volts.

The heat setting is supposed to change the draft fan voltage from 70 volts at the low feed rate and increase it up to the highest setting of 107 volts on the #5 setting.

I can easily change the resistors in the heat control block to make the sweet spot even sweeter.

5 seconds between drops is nearly perfect for our HIGH setting and the low setting on the factory board was nearly 8 seconds...too long.

The factory #2 setting is 5 seconds.

I have the following times available
7.15 seconds
6.34 seconds
5.23 seconds
4.99 seconds
4.02 seconds
3/10 second (Nearly constant auger run to prime an empty stove)

I am thinking about maybe changing some resistors, but want to wait until the unit is actually running the stove under live fire to see wassssssssup.

The 5.23 and 4.99 are right in the groove

These are standard resistor values available in 1/2 watt type.


Easy to buy a few and mess around to really tweak things in..

 

I totally expect you to mass produce your unit,for the older stoves!!!

 

Sorry,could not resist!