[Shaun @ Tru6]

So I guess I celebrated a little too early having the silkscreen dryer hooked up. I hope someone here can help troubleshoot this enough to I know what to order/replace.

The dryer works with 3 unique heating elements suspended over the conveyor belt. After getting it working, I found:

1. one heater worked close to or at spec (13 ohms)
2. one heater worked half as well (26 ohms)
3. one heater did (no continuity)

I took the heater that did not work, opened up the sheetmetal, dug down through the clay wadding and found the 2 leads were rusted away. I welded new metal contacts to the coils (very difficult), took the heating element board, laid it on top of the another (sheetmetal box), hooked it up and it worked, and worked great! Put it back in its sheetmetal box and laid that box back in the frame, didn't bother to bolt it in.

I took the half-efficiency heater and pretty much did the same thing. Went back, wired it up, and...

NONE of them work.

here's where I am at.

All three have continuity at 13 ohms across the two contacts

All three have 120V going to each lead

All three are stone cold


What am I missing? How can they not heat up if each lead/contact has 120V going to it and each has good continuity?

There is a temp controller that could be bad, but I don't understand how e- can be going to the heaters but they don't heat up. Do the sheetmetal boxes need to be bolted to the frame essentially grounding them?

The wiring diagram is basic. 230 comes in and goes to a mercury contactor. Temp control (basic dial) goes to the mercury contactor. Leads go from the MC to the control strip which goes to the leads, which have current.

One thing has changed, one of the three heater lights is now lit. According to the manual, "When no voltage is goingthrough the heater panel, the heater circuit light is on, thus the teh heater circuits lights will be on when the dryer is off. The heater circuit indicator light goes off when voltage is going through the heater and heat is being supplied."



Wasted the entire day today working on this, and yesterday was a bust with the water pump going on the 4Runner, so any help will be much appreciated.