So if anyone is curious as to what I actually did for my roasting setup, it ended up being 2 SC/TOs. Just pulled my first 2 roasts from them on Monday night.
First, I started by separating the heating coil and stirring motor of both Stir Crazy's. I put them each on their own plug. Once they were all assembled, I threw 1# of green beans in there to test with my modified stirring arms, and at best, it gave me angel wings. Perfect...
At this point, I played around with modifying the arms slightly to see if I could get proper stirring. It was always negligible for the 1lb after roast I am shooting for with these guys, so I decided not to spare the expense, and to modify further. Father in law has a couple nice 60RPM electric motors sitting around (with about 100 other various ones), so I set to work with the brother in law. Got those big boys mounted in there, and it was a night and day difference. Very difficult to bog these down.
Next came the spacer issue. I used a 3/4" strip of aluminum, and bent it and fastened in 3 spots much like what Peter has done with his. I can push the overlap open to let the chaff out and let it spring back to close to retain heat. Simple enough.
After this, I needed to find somewhere to mount these, as they now have about 6-7" of motor hanging off the bottom, so I picked up a couple alarm panel boxes I had around, and set to work mounting the things to those. I figured I needed a spacer, and now there is about 1/4" clearance from the bottom of the motor to the bottom of the box. The box is hinged in the front, so I can lift it over and dump the beans. Seems to work beautifully. The plan is to mount the bottom part of the box to their final resting place and build a bean cooler that will sit in the center of them, with a chute going up to each side to pivot the SC on the hinged box when dumping.
Arm attachment was another whole ordeal with the new motors, as they are a standard 5/16" shaft. I had thought of grinding a slot in the top, and fastening the arm in there somehow, or getting some thick stainless piano wire, and spring tensioning the arm on it. In the end, I borrowed a die from my Dad, and threaded the shafts. The darn things were super hard. Was quite an ordeal, but it works beautifully. Then I threaded on a stainless nut, and put a crush washer in, next came the arm, and a final nut. All tightened together, it works wonderful. I did everything previously stated to both SC's using identical hardware and motor.
The next trick was to deal with the Turbo Ovens. (Sunpentown SO-2000). Started out the same as with the SC, with pulling them apart. First one I had trouble, and ended up trying to pull the fan off the shaft before I realized that there are 4 screws down in recessed holes, that hold the top plastic on. Took the top cover off, and set to rewiring this guy totally as well. Removed the handle switch, and the timer knob, and wired cords directly. One cord goes to the fan, as well as the Power LED I believe, so the LED is on when the fan is on. The fan cord, I used a grounded cord for, and put a ground on the fan. The other is wired directly to the heater, with the LED hooked up as it was stock. Modified the top case with the dremel a bit, so the other cord exits beside the stock cord. Reassembled the TO, and straightened the fan blades as best I could. Plugged in and tested, and the fan and heat now work independently, but the heat knob still needs to be set to full. Will be using router controllers to control the heating coils.
The next step, now that both parts were working as they should, was a control panel for said devices. A picture is worth a thousand works here. Basically, it is a double box with 2 receptacles, all separated. Below is a 3 gang box with 3 switches that control the receptacles from top left, top right, to bottom left. The bottom right is hot all the time, and that is where the router control is plugged in. I found this to be the most cost effective option, as single switched and single gangable boxes are super cheap. The special double switches are expensive, and I don't need one for the router control. It's all mounted on some identically sized offcuts of melamine I had sitting by the saw.
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