The kiln just sort of happened. We had a 17" Evenheat and wanted something larger. I had a background in studio ceramics and we were thinking in terms of brick "bath tub" kilns. By chance, we encountered a Skutt GM22CS, a sweet 24" kiln whose design I still admire. It was too expensive at the time, but it introduced us to totally new ways of thinking. I also spent a summer at Pilchuck and got to see large professional kilns by BVD and Nabertherm and others. A mutual friend introduced me to a great NASA thermal engineer about that time and I began to seriously study kiln design and heat. My most useful discovery was: "Make friends with sales engineers - they know a lot". As we realized that we could build a really nice kiln, my wife and I talked ourselves into larger and larger designs, with the available power coming into our studio finally setting a firm upper limit. The design evolved over several years as we collected components and finally being laid off in 2007 provided me with 6 months of free time to work on actual construction. I started in ernest in August and we saw "first heat" just after New Years. It lasted about 5 minutes and then a 100A breaker blew, but it was still a thrill.
Lutetium
bdh.dimagin
The kiln just sort of happened. We had a 17" Evenheat and wanted something larger. I had a background in studio ceramics and we were thinking in terms of brick "bath tub" kilns. By chance, we encountered a Skutt GM22CS, a sweet 24" kiln whose design I still admire. It was too expensive at the time, but it introduced us to totally new ways of thinking. I also spent a summer at Pilchuck and got to see large professional kilns by BVD and Nabertherm and others. A mutual friend introduced me to a great NASA thermal engineer about that time and I began to seriously study kiln design and heat. My most useful discovery was: "Make friends with sales engineers - they know a lot". As we realized that we could build a really nice kiln, my wife and I talked ourselves into larger and larger designs, with the available power coming into our studio finally setting a firm upper limit. The design evolved over several years as we collected components and finally being laid off in 2007 provided me with 6 months of free time to work on actual construction. I started in ernest in August and we saw "first heat" just after New Years. It lasted about 5 minutes and then a 100A breaker blew, but it was still a thrill.