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Posted by Ron Parker on July 19, 2007, 4:50 pm
Please log in for more thread options On Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:30:04 -0700, J wrote:
> I recently aquired a kiln, but there are some issues. The biggest
> issue is that it runs on 220v and i do not have a 220v outlet in the
> garage i plan on using it in. I was wondering are the heating elements
> in it specific to 220v or if i was to replace the controller with a
> 120v controller would it still work. (I know enough about electricity
> to do that safely otherwise i would not even attempt it.)
It might still work, but your biggest problem will be that it'll take
forever to heat up. The elements have a fixed resistance, so by Ohm's
Law, if you cut the voltage in half, you'll cut the current (in Amps)
flowing through the elements in half. That'll cut the power (in Watts)
by a factor of four. If the kiln was rated for more than about 30A at
220V, you'll have another problem: it'll want to draw more than the 15A
your outlets are probably rated for, you'll blow a breaker, and it won't
heat up at all.
In addition to that, kiln designers carefully calculate all sorts of
factors like power per square foot, power per cubic foot, power per square
inch of element wire, and so on that will be thrown way out of whack if you
give it 1/4 of the power it's expecting, so even if it does heat up in a
reasonable amount of time, it's likely to give you poor performance.
All in all, it's probably worth it to get a 220V outlet hooked up if you
want to use that kiln. If you want to use 120V, sell that one and use the
money to buy a little 120V kiln. (And it will be little, because 120 volts
at 15 amps just isn't that much power, really.)
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