heater control for curing oven

In article .com,
wrote:


5. What is a very affordable PID controller (preferably under $100)
that will allow the ramp rate (up and down) to be set?



Joe

A stand alone, full PID with ramp and soak? Several hundred dollars, I'm
afraid. Keep an eye out on ebay, but the one Dan referenced isn't such a
beast.

Again, I have absolutely no idea what your requirements are as far as
accuracy and precision. If you can clarify those, you might find that
you need less sophistication. Also, as someone else mentioned, you might
find PC based software to do the work of a temperature controller. I
don't know what's out there in that regard.

Yaa, you would think that an I/O card (with the TC voltage coming in
and the voltage to the relay going out) could do this pretty easily and
you could just put in the "curve" you want in your PC program and it
would know how to get you there. Basically a PC software driven PID
using a cheap I/O card off the RS232.

I did a brief look but couldn't find anything though so it's no doubt
harder than I'm imagining it.

I did find some cool stuff on guys doing their own coffee roasting with
hot-air popcorn poppers They're using PIDs too.

Joe

If you want to try to "roll your own" you might check out basic stamps
- and the clones. I'm pretty sure that you could find some freeware
for these that does what you need.

http://www.parallax.com/
====================
Leon McAtee
having lots of fun with my bent trike............but need to get back
to work on the Quickie.

" wrote in
oups.com:

If you want to try to "roll your own" you might check out basic stamps
- and the clones. I'm pretty sure that you could find some freeware
for these that does what you need.

http://www.parallax.com/
====================
Leon McAtee
having lots of fun with my bent trike............but need to get back
to work on the Quickie.



Also, look at PixAxe micro-controllers. Much cheaper than Basic Stamp.
Lot'a of free software and support web sites. Programming is in "basic"
like the Basic Stamp.

Otherwise have you looked at eBay. I've picked up several programmable
controllers for cheap, compared to new prices.