Nope again... Converted the photo. Saved it at a lower res. nothing... can't post a picture for some reason from phone or laptop.
No problem with the picture. That's awesome that you let your roaster warm up for an hour. Unless you're just curious, I wouldn't worry too much about logging and roasting issues until you get the air-flow control installed. It's going to change everything and you are going to want to log the position of the damper throughout the roast too. Does Artisan allow you to customize or add events/triggers during a roast?
This is sort of 2-fold in that it explains the use of the air-flow control during warm-up, but it also describes how to warm up the roaster... they go hand in hand.
If you were NOT warming up your roaster over time that could shed some additional light on roast anomalies. Trying to get up to roasting speed too fast is also a good way to seize the drum against the face plate. The drum sets above the burners and expands quicker than the surrounding steel of the roaster. And people do find themselves in a situation where they try to play catch up, and will throttle the gas all the way back up to 10-11" in an attempt to "recover" the roast... or.... Say they normally only roast one batch of coffee per day but have never let their roaster warm up properly. When the day comes that they have to do back to back roast they will be pulling their hair out trying to figure out why the first and second roast differ so much with the same bean.
Also, do not overload your roaster. It is designed so that "X" lbs of beans tumble nicely at "X" rpm within "X" diameter drum. Imagine you're in a big hurry to get your roasting done. And you're so eager today that you decide to squeeze 7 lbs of beans into your SF6. You charge the beans into your super heated drum and the first thing you notice is the bean action through the sight glass looks a little sluggish? What do you think could potentially be happening to the beans that are laying against the super hot drum instead of tumbling evenly? You'd be surprised how many people will try to use a 1lb roaster for production and basically choke the poor thing to death.
This is basically how you would warm up your roaster with air-flow control...
- Turn on the roaster and when the pilot ignites, throttle your gas to full until the manifold is purged and all of your burners have lit.
- Lower the gas pressure down to 1.5 to 2.0" and CLOSE your new air-flow control to approximately 80% closed (almost completely vertical).
- This begins the important warm up phase and ideally your roaster should be hovering around 390 to 400 degrees (red bean temp) over the last 10 minutes of a 30 to 40 minute total warm-up period. Does that make sense?
- To stabilize the temp during warmup make subtle changes using both the air-flow and gas controls. The warm-up period ensures that the core of the roaster is heated evenly and the roaster is retaining heat as a thermal mass.
- Don't rush. If you can still lay a hand on the outer metal skin around the drum consider letting it warm up longer. If you go over your intended charge temp, NO WORRIES, make a minor tweak and let the temperature come down gradually.
Let's roast... I am totally slammed with projects but will try and post an example of air-flow position during a roast asap.
And since you've been set up for about a month, how are you venting your SF6???
Initial straight pipe run off the roaster with minimal curves at exhaust end? Yes?
How long is the total run of the exhaust?
