Saturday, June 17th, 2006 by Push Eject
After building the Electric Hot Liquor Tank I realized clamping a temperature controller to my brewstand and having wire nuts next to 180°F water was stupid.
Thus I made the Wort-O-Matic control panel for my brewstand.
Members of the Brewboard (
brewboard.com) asked for a diary of my experience.
Let me say that electricity can kill you and I do not advocate doing what I have done here.
My adventure can be broken down into the following parts:
- Planning the Control Panel
- Obtaining the Components
- Preparing the Panel
- Wiring the Panel
- Deploying the Panel
- Other Needs
- Planning the Control Panel
- Defining NEEDS
I had an existing two-tier brewstand with the HLT high and the Mash Tun and Boil Kettle low. Control was needed of:
- Water temperature in the HLT
- Pump on/off for:
- Mash temperature (raising tempature during the mash by recirculating wort through a heat exchanger in the HLT
- Lautering. My lauter grant is only 4 gallons and must pump out to the kettle at least 3 times while sparging
- Amperage drawn. The electic heating element in the HLT plus the pump could trip a 15amp breaker so an amp display would tell the brewer when it was close.
- Kill switches for the three powered elements - HLT heater, pump, stirrer
- Count-down timer
- Defining WANTS
- Visual indication of power to all elements
- Humor and coolness-factor
- Integrating Existing Systems
I had already built the lauter grant level doctor and wanted to integrate it into the new panel.
- Creating a Mock-up
In photoshop I began laying out pictures of possible components and creating a mock-up
- Obtaining the Components
This took a while.
I first stalked eBay for two Johnson Controls A419s. I paid about $50 for one and $12 for the other.
Later, thanks to George Schmidt on The Brewing Network and Brewboard forums I discovered the Love Controls TS series controllers and bought two of those to use instead of the Johnson's at $50 each from Cole-Parmer.com
Other components came from All Electronics, Electronic City, Apex Surplus and my own garage.
| Cost Breakdown |
|
|
| $309.00 |
| Holy crap, was it really that much?! |
- Preparing the Panel
- Tooling the Metal
After obtaining all the controls, indicator lamps and switches I created a final layout in Photoshop and printed it at 100% to see what I thought of it.
I held it in place on my brewstand, I "pushed" buttons and "flipped" switches and decided on a final layout.
Using a caliper, a straight-edge and a pencil I drew out the cutouts on the aluminum and drilled holes (or pilot holes) for each.
Holes drilled; power switch test-fitted.
- Facing the Metal
Acrylic silk-screen ink will not adhere to aluminum so after a thorough washing with dish detergent to remove oils and grease the tooled panel is primed with a spray from Krylon. This was followed by three coats of flat black spray paint.
The silk-screen was made very similarly to this website's description and printed on the panel.
Here is the printed panel before five coats of spray satin clear polycrylic for protection.
- Mounting Components
While mounting I found a few holes too small and one forgotten entirely. An 'on' indicater LED for the count-down timer got a hole right between the timer's two switches.
- Creating an Enclosure
I opted to build the enclosure out of wood for several reasons:
- I had a ton of it laying around
- It is very easy to work with
- Wiring the Panel
- This was nutty. I diagramed out my hot flow like this:
Wiring in progress:
Wiring completed:
- Deploying the Panel
- In the rear; outlets for the three switched elements and one 'always hot':
- The box now completed:
In order to mount the new panel to my existing brewstand, I screwed 1/2" floor flanges to its sides and used 2" pipe to create a pivot point. Those rest in coat hooks bolted to the stand
All done and in place:
- Other Needs
- Adding a New Branch Circuit
Call an electrician.
Period.
Maybe you are the Goddess's gift to handymen and can do that crap yourself, but I'm not.
I called a guy and had two new 20 amp circuits run into the garage for this and other purposes for a very reasonable fee.
- Things I Would Have Done Differently
- The outlet cover I used for the XLR probe connectors gets in the way. I should have put the probes on the back of the box.
- The buttons on the timer are big and clunky. Something sleeker would be better.
- Silk-screening is hard... I should have practiced more before doing my final print.
Posted in Homebrewing | 7 comments »
![[http://www.wortomatic.com]](http://www.wortomatic.com/images/home.jpg)
Good job!
Cheers!
somehow stumbled upon your site, quite a tidy bit of kit you've designed there!
Rob.