Preprogrammed burnouts in a jewelry kiln

I have a digital kiln that uses preprogrammed burnouts. They include 5
hour, 8 hour, and 12 hour burnouts. The hold temperature at the end of
each burnout is 900 degrees F.

I can also program my own burnouts.

What do you think of 900 degrees F as a hold temperature for the
preprogrammed burnouts? For most of your flasks, what casting
temperature do you use?

Does anyone ever use the preprogrammed burnouts, or do you always
write your own programs?

Thanks,

Allen Steen

What do you think of 900 degrees F as a hold temperature for the
preprogrammed burnouts? For most of your flasks, what casting
temperature do you use?

Allen - I use 900 degrees F holding for most of my casts. I do demo
casting at a show and cast every 2 hours during the day. 900 works
fine, but I'm casting 'standard' stuff. If I'm casting thinner pieces,
I want the flask to be at 1,000 degrees F.

Does anyone ever use the preprogrammed burnouts, or do you always
write your own programs?

I use the 12 hour preprog burnout during a show - I'm using HGMS club
equipment (see www.hgms.org). At home I do a manual burnout with a
single temperature controler: set temp for 300 about 7 to 8 pm, turn
to 800 just before bed time, get up sometime around 4 am to set 1250,
then I set 900 when I first get up in the morning. Yeah, it's rough
timing, but I haven't lost more than 2 or 3 casts in the past 5 or so
years. Remember that people have been casting for several thousand
years before we had fancy controlers (I wonder what their percentage
of good casts were?).

Charlie Leo