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Originally Posted by wlively  First, therocouples are nice thing to have, but unless you are doing some serious baking or commercial baking they are not really neccessary |
Yeah, it's mostly from obsessive curiosity, but we are doing some serious baking, and trying out a variety of different firing schedules.
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Originally Posted by wlively As for replacement, you need to know what type of thermocouples they are. You can replace the wire running it as close to the original as possible or replace the TC's and the wire at the same time. As stated above you must get the wire made for the type of thermocouple you have, generically matched. The wire itself is not match to that exact thermocouple and does not have to be the same length as long you are not adding tens of feet then any temp difference readings will be less than a degree or so. |
So let me talk this through and make sure I understand. Thermocouples are calibrated for a specific thickness and length of wire; a thicker wire would lower resistance, giving a higher reading, and a thinner wire would raise resistance, giving lower reading; a longer wire would raise resistance, giving a lower reading, and a shorter wire would lower resistance, giving a higher reading. Is that correct?
So we have five k-type connectors (the little forks coming out of yellow plastic plugs) sticking out of the front of the oven. They plug into the rotary switch, and another length of wires (a couple inches long) with connectors on either end connects that to the digital readout. Most of what I have to fuss with is that small section of wire. The wire currently used is a single strand, kind of thick (1mm?), somewhat inflexible, brittle wire. I opened up the connectors to make the connections a little tighter, but it's not a very easy wire to work with. They broke a few times when I made the loops, and it's a little too thick to work well with such small screws. Since it's such a small length of wire in respect to the grand scheme, would it cause significant problems to replace that with a multi-strand braided wire, that would be more flexible, and wrap around the screws more easily?