Newbie W/ Questions on oven build

[hoghollor]

I have built a new curing oven. I built it out of mainly junk from the scrap yard and a free double oven I scrounged off of craigslist for free. My oven ID is 36x24x72. I made it big enough to use on motorcycle frames. I have pics attached. It ain't pretty but I am hoping it will do the job. My question is this can I rework the wiring on the elements so that the upper oven switch when set to bake will run 2 elements and the lower will also run the other 2. Will this overload it in any way? I used the same basic design as outlined at http://www.powdercoatoven.4t.com/ Any help you can lend is appreciated.hoghollor@aol.com

[PhredAre]

Pretty difficult for anyone to give you an answer to your questions in regards to the capacity of the various items in your oven. First off, is it a bulb type oven controller or an electronic controller, what size elements are installed, is the insulation in good shape, do the doors seal good. What size of feeder breaker is advailable, and so on. You could do what we call a smoke test, might be a good idea to call the Fire Dept and give them a heads up! If you were to do that then maybe it would work as you envisioned, but I wouldn't want to be to far away from it when it was in service. Now with all that said, There are some work arounds that might help to hold the expenses down, but its pretty hard to beat a system that could be designed by some of the contributors to this forum. ( your turn Ed ) Fred

[JTW37]

I'm not Ed, but, you need to total all the wattages of your elements and divide that by your voltage (240) and that will tell you what kind of amps you will be pulling. Like mine is 8150 watts total and it pulls 34 amps. I have it on a 50 amp breaker.

As far as using two different switches to control two elements, you should be able to, if you know how to set it up. On the other hand, if you leave them all on one switch, when they reach your set temp, they won't pull as many amp because they are only going to keep the temp constant. meaning, when they reach, say 400 deg, they won't be near as red, so they are pulling less amps.

Anyway, that's the way it appears. Hope this helps.

[ed_denu]

I think Fred and JTW have pretty much summed it up for you. Without more information I would be careful doing this as electrical overloads tend to be rather ugly.

In the oven build you reference they removed the oven components and noted that the contactor they salvaged was rated at 50 amps. Other than this, they do not give a lot of detail about how the electrical components were re-assembled.

[4bangger]

The only other thing I think should be mentioned here is you want to make sure you wire size (awg) is big enough to handle the current draw of your oven. do some research to make sure your not causing a fire hazard. good luck

[FigureLLC]

Originally Posted by hoghollor

It ain't pretty

don't be modest.