Tiny Cheap Fluid Bed Roaster update: Chaff Collector & PID works

-
Tije designed and produced a beautiful and perfectly functional chaff collector for our roaster and Jan worked on a better configuration of Artisan to match the Arduino board so now the Artisan PID works so well that we could automatically roast along our pre-defined roast curve.

The beans look a little uneven because they are very cheap Robustas especially selected for our test purposes. Next time we can roast the better beans.

Also for next version, we want to get the Area Under Curve feature working and we want to see if the base of the roaster can be downsized. If we make a pre-production model, it would be better looking with a smaller footprint.



Jan wrote this report for his blog:

Yesterday we worked again on our Tiny Little fluid bed roaster. On the menu was to further configure the PID-settings. This should make it possible to precisely and consistently execute roast profiles.
For our test we used again Indian Cherry Robusta. This cheap coffee produced lot’s of chaff during the roast. Although the roast results looked fine we don’t recommend anyone to drink the as a single origin espresso. The bean however was perfect for testing purposes.
There were several things that we changed after our last PID-testing attempt. At first Frans brought along an active usb extension cable. This cable is supposed to make the communication between the TC4 board and the Artisan roast software more reliable. That means minimization of spikes or other reading errors. After examining all previous PID configuration attempts Frans suggested to start using the I value of the PID settings. This was a great idea because after that the PID worked magically good as you can see the graph below.

Tije’s chaff collector was again very effective in catching all the Robusta chaff. For the next version we will try to find another way to safely shut of the roaster because the power element does not automatically shut down after pushing the ‘drop’ button. Also for next version, we want to get the Area Under Curve feature working and we want to see if the base of the roaster can be downsized. If we make a pre-production model, it would be better looking with a smaller footprint.

Youtube version of the video:

Reacties

Een reactie posten

Populaire posts van deze blog

Finished Pavoni & Fuji PXG4 pid: Probe Inside the Ring

-
Afbeelding
Delicious cup: all the work was well invested! At the end of the previous blog about the pressostat and PID working together , I mentioned that I would like to clean up the xmas tree of wires and have as few cables and probes as possible to visually disturb the classic design of the La Pavoni. Getting rid of the probe that was fastened with copper tape to the top of the brew group was a priority. I wanted to hide a new probe in the cooling fin as close as possible to the brew group. This morning I asked Tije if he could do that. He would need to drill a straight hole of 3mm diameter in the 4mm inner ring of the cooling fin that sits as a tight clamp around the brew group. Always the optimist, Tije set to work: First, Tije made a piece of aluminum to fit the inside of the ring. Drilling a thin hole straight through the curved aluminum, if possible tangentially going through the inside of the ring to touch the brew head directly, you need the support of the temporary insid
Meer lezen

Tiny Cheap Fluid Bed Roaster by Tije and Jan

-
Afbeelding
(also see Daily Coffee News feature ) Tije designed and made the following structure for a tiny and cheap fluid bed roaster, to which Jan van der Weel added the Arduino parts, electronics and programming: Sketch by Tije de Jong Jan sourced a very cheap blower (€ 11) to start with, Tije developed and constructed the mechanics, Jan built together and programmed the TC4 / SSR electronics.  On his blog, Jan will specify exactly how the TC4 part is combined and programmed and I will copy these details into this blog entry, just as Jan will use this video in his blog. We did a few test roasts to make sure it works at all and it does. Towards the end, the first roast tended to get a flat BT line and airflow was slightly decreased. 200g seems max load of green beans. Second roast a little more power was given to the heater. Next we will try the Background Roast driven by the PID software of Artisan. A week later, with updated software that works better to change the fan
Meer lezen

KiwiSDR2 [radio]

-
Afbeelding
  Despite selling one and giving away two of the five monster vintage 'boat anchor' receivers that I had, I still enjoy listening to shartwave radio. The modern iCOM R8600 that I also have has a wider range plus some decoding options but it's not easy to figure out what encoding is used on which frequencies. The SDR-Control app from Marcus Roskosch at https://ham-radio-apps.com/ makes this much easier and also allows some remote control of the receiver so you can place it and an antenna at the top floor of your house while listening downstairs. I also got the SDRplay RSP1B box: This offers a great listening experience at a very low price compared to the iCOM hardware. I had one before and bought one again after a (somewhat limited) Mac version of the software became available. This device needs a computer to be connected to the receiver. For some time now a nifty little device has appeared which not only works standalone, it even allows you or anyone else to utilize the
Meer lezen