Cart question

woodhick · March 31, 2008, 01:24:15 AM

I have my chamber almost ready to go. I am using an insulated "reefer" aluminum truck body. Length is 22' so I will most likely partition off to 17'. Most of my stuff is 8 or 10 footers for cabinet makers, but I want the ability to do 16' when I need it. I can baffle it for the short stuff. Inside width of box is 7'4". Still trying to decide how wide to make my carts. Don't want them to tip when loaded. What are others doing?

Brad_S. · March 31, 2008, 08:54:48 AM

Might be too late in the process for this to be useful to you, but I'll throw it out there. I have a customer who also used a trailer for their kiln. They built an enclosure OUTSIDE of the trailer to house the condenser unit and the controller. They used a short solid duct to connect the intake to the trailer and a flexible duct to steer the condenser/heater air back into the trailer. That way they could use 6' carts inside the trailer and still have room on either side for proper air flow.

woodhick · March 31, 2008, 05:49:12 PM

I hadn't thought of that one. great idea! I haven't installed equipment yet so it's not too late to do that. Would like to hear Don's input on that type of setup.

Brad_S. · March 31, 2008, 10:20:41 PM

I didn't study their setup very closely, but it seemed to me that that the down side of such a set up is that you wouldn't be able to recover the heat off the compressor. For my kiln, which has the compressor in the kiln, once the compressor motor starts running for any length of time, the aux. heater rarely runs again.

Don_Lewis · April 01, 2008, 07:14:55 AM

Putting the unit outside and having 6' wide load is okay as long as the stack is not over 3-1/2' to 4' high. It is better to make the stack 4' wide if stacking higher. As for putting the unit in a housing on the side of the trailer, that is often done and can work well if you pay attention to air flow and air distribution.

scsmith42 · April 01, 2008, 11:46:50 PM

My unit is in a housing on the side of my container kiln, and it works well. I built 48" wide carts, and typically stack them 36 - 42" wide. Having the DH unit in the housing allows me to walk the length of the kiln chamber for inspecting the load.

I put my temp and RH sensor's on a swing-away bracket, so I can easily fold it against the wall of the container when I'm walking back and forth. Otherwise it's a pain to get past and you risk breaking off the bracket.

Some lessons learned - make the spacing on the cart crosspieces EXACTLY the same. Mine are at approximately 17". If they are the same, you can stack and sticker in advance and set the complete stacks on your cart, and have the stickers line up with the bottom crosspieces.

Build a track inside the kiln for the cart to roll down. Nyle's model with the 6" wide 1/4" flat bar works well. Before I added the track, one of my first kiln cart wheels punched a hole right through the floor of my kiln.

Scott

Kelvin · April 02, 2008, 08:31:36 AM

Ditto on the carts. I bought my "vee" grove wheels from grainger for pretty cheap, and welded heavy 3" "I" beam steel. My first carts costs me tons of time, and sucked. Don't skimp there. They get pretty heavy to push in and out as well. Know how you will do that? Mine are 48" wide and about 72" tall and i can barely move them by myself, they are on nice greaseable wheels. Another thing on the carts. Pay attention to where you put the wheels. They tend to not want to be in the way of crossbars, but this makes setting things on the cart w/ a forklift difficult. My forks are always in the way of something or the other. Takes tons of time to get them exactly spaced. Wasted time. Better to think ahead. And yes, make sure your carts and air dried stacks line up so you can pick them up and set them on your cart without touching them. Think of the tons of time you will save.
Good luck,
KP