Basterfield urn Brutus 20 build

[Beachless Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Beachless]

I always thought mechanical relays were a good option, but I read somewhere they are not ideal for high resistive loads as the constant arcing eventually welds them closed? Something like that

You are right big inductive loads are hard on relays but also on ssr's. Both need some consideration before using.

[Beachless Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Beachless]

For the simple man, such as myself, how could I safely control my mash with a STC1000? It's a 10amp switch and the elements on the urn obviously require a bit more. My STC gets warm/hot which makes me worried but is not as alarming when I take the lid off the Tupperware its houses in. What am I risking by doing this? A fire? What can I do to mitigate this on my current system?

Sent from my SM-A530F using Tapatalk

Its always a good idea to use an external relay and not the internal one even with smaller loads. That way the controller doesn't have to work as hard as its only switching the external relay on or off.

[Beachless Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Beachless]

About the only good use left for a mede8er! Cool looking build, are you using the old active cooling for the SSR's?
Whatever you do dont go running an SSR without a heatsink, I did some tests and it will go really badly.

I doubt that would be enough to be honest. I have a 2.5kw element in my 35L urn and when I was doing boil tests before my first brew the heatsink got too hot to touch.
It gets hot when there is current flowing through and cools a little when its in the off state. I have a fairly beefy graphics card heatsink on mine and I had to add the fan that was on the card to it.
Managed to do a 60 min mash + 90 min boil on it for my first brew today. Definitely would have been a problem without the fan.

The aluminium I have is pretty solid. I bought it for a COB LED light I built. Think its 4mm thick and about 80mm wide. Its worth a try otherwise I'll have to move the relays to an external box. But time will tell.

[Rocket-Boy Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Rocket-Boy]

The aluminium I have is pretty solid. I bought it for a COB LED light I built. Think its 4mm thick and about 80mm wide. Its worth a try otherwise I'll have to move the relays to an external box. But time will tell.

It might be fine like that, just give it a prod every now and then to see how hot it is.
I was mostly concerned about it melting the PLA container I printed for it which was why I added some active cooling.
I did add some cooling slots on the lid of the container but I figured the cooler everything run, the longer it will last.

[billionairebum Member Find all posts View Profile Close billionairebum]

How is the progress on this? I am keen on doing a similar build.

[tman32 Member Find all posts View Profile Close tman32]

Use the STC to switch an external relay.

See THIS post for what I mean (still want to do this myself to put less stress on the STC relays)

Good post.

I personally build a 15A relay circuit into my stc1000 and it handles 2500w no problem.

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

Good post.

I personally build a 15A relay circuit into my stc1000 and it handles 2500w no problem.

Any pics/diagram/part numbers of your setup ?

PS: Welcome to the forum

[tman32 Member Find all posts View Profile Close tman32]

Any pics/diagram/part numbers of your setup ?

PS: Welcome to the forum

I used the diagram from this project, just disregard the cold side:http://www.brew.x10.mx/STC1000Project.html

Bought this relay: https://za.rs-online.com/web/p/non-l...d%22%3Atrue%7D

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

tman32 Thanks