When "Start" doesn't start

Might want to check the fuse on the side of the controller. Here is a real oddity that happened to me this spring. My controller started jumping temp readouts by 100 up to 1500 degrees. So, I shut it down and checked the thermocouple and the wiring; have had wires contact before- nadda. In desperation I took the controller out to inspect the connections. There, in the middle of the circuits; in all its glory and splendor was a june bug that had crawled out onto it and fried itself. Which explains the reading of 3895F that I saw. So now, I make it a habit every few months of using the keyboard air cans to blow dust and debri off the controller. In the spirit of harmony with nature, the june bug was cremated with the firing he disrupted.

Tom

Assuming the kiln turns on (meaning you get a display when it is plugged in and you can actually enter a firing schedule like you mentioned) I would guess that rules out any possibility of no power to the kiln. Meaning not fuse, and not breaker or plug and receptacle.

I would guess it is just a button failure, or just a delay, or sometimes I just forget to push 'enter' that one last time and start just wont work until the last 'enter' is pushed.

From time to time my start button is hard to press. Try pushing it in different spots, harder too. Does it normally make a noise when it is pressed? Mine does.

If it normally makes a noise when it is pressed and you are not getting a noise at all it might be button failure. if the pushing in different spots doesn't work you may have to send it in.

If you get a button noise when pressed and it just doesn't turn the elements on (no relay clicking or whatever) then just give it some time and see if anything happens. If still nothing happens after a long while and the button did make a noise after pressed then maybe relay failure, or loose wires like Arnie says, to relays or something.

Every once in a while mine will take up to a whole minute or more to actually start switching the relays after I pushed the start button. It didn't used to do this. The first time it happened I was baffled and would push stop and enter the schedule all over again and try again.  I finally just let it sit a while (left and came back) and it started working.  Dunno why but now it occasionally has a delay before it starts, which can be a long one.

Now when that happens I just leave it be and sit there and it starts eventually.

This is all assuming you are still able to enter in a schedule (like you mentioned.)



G

Koz:

You mean Harley makes a kiln? Man O man; could have bought a 1300CF.. or is that CC? Kick start-gas fired- hard brick- or is that hard tail? To think I bought a Yamaha kiln...

Tom

Thank you to all who responded.
Yes, Dr. Arnie I was particularily aggravated.
Tom - loved your story about the June bug - that was one hot June bug!
Greg - thank you for all that effort. I knew that it was something weird because as I was programing a different firing schedule, a few times it would not input a number and gave me an error message - I think it was Er-cd - whatever it was, it meant that I was programming it not to display error messages - and all of this in the middle of simply changing ramps and holds! But then it decided to cooperate and let me input the schedule so I thought it might be okay.
It was an air gap. You would think that a kiln that is just one year old would not have these kinds of problems. However, when purchasing the kiln I was given bad information - I was absolutely assured that if I bought the vent with the L&L kiln, I could safely enclose the 23" x 27" kiln in a 4x4 foot enclosure and fire it with no problems. So, that's what I did at first. However, after a couple of kiln shutoffs for too much heat at the controller, and a couple other error messages for other odd reasons, I just made sure that the weather had 0% chance of rain for the next week before using the kiln so I wouldn't get fried with 240. However, part of the time during the winter, I still felt uncomfortable with no coverage on the kiln so I covered it part of the way just in case moisture might get to it and so there is still too much heat. And even when the days are particularily warm and I'm firing, I know that the heat is affecting it.
So, before this info., I had opened the front of the controller and everything looked like it was connected well. However, I was afrraid to jostle things around a bit because I thought it might void my warranty - you know how that is with some things.
However, the L&L guy got back to me the following day and said to open the front of the controller. There is a ribbon connector towards the bottom of the box that needed to be reseated by disconnecting it, wiping it with a tissue, and putting it back into the slot. It worked! But I'm thinking that all of that heat - the contraction and expansion - because of that heat, it needed to be reseated.
I will be having our contractor build a studio by 2016 but for now there are these issues.
I met a guy at Ginny's workshop who had the numbers on his controller slowly disappear. He had to get a new controller and the reason that the numbers died out was because of too much heat. With his new controller, he ended up getting a computer fan that he installed about 6" below the controller. He said that the Skutt guy laughed at him about his solution but he said that it does the job beautifully.