MES mod

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wesb

Fire Starter
Original poster
Nov 9, 2009
45
10
So i have an MES with burnt out terminals, but while it was down bought a GOSM, then built a UDS. Now the uds gets most of the use.  but i want to make sausage, and i hated the hot spot in the MES, so what if i put in a hot plate and wired it to where the heating element used to connect?  That way i'd have a thermostat and timer built in, and a heat source in the center of the unit. Plus better smoke at low temps.
 
So i have an MES with burnt out terminals, but while it was down bought a GOSM, then built a UDS. Now the uds gets most of the use.  but i want to make sausage, and i hated the hot spot in the MES, so what if i put in a hot plate and wired it to where the heating element used to connect?  That way i'd have a thermostat and timer built in, and a heat source in the center of the unit. Plus better smoke at low temps.
1. I think the factory MES wire will handle the Hot Plate.

2. I think you are going to have a lot of issues with the Hot plate controller and the MES factory controller fighing to maintain temp. They will be cycling on and off at diffrent times. This is what i understand about the controllers. Found this online about the temp controllers.

Some temperature controllers have longer temperature cycle periods and experience more temperature overshoot than others.  A heating or cooling apparatus which is trying to maintain a target temperature will do this by increasing or decreasing power to the heating or cooling element to keep the actual temperature as close to the target temperature as possible.  This results in a fluctuation in actual temperature called a temperature cycle.   The difference between the actual and target temperature in this cycle is called the temperature overshoot if the actual temperature is above the target temperature, or temperature undershoot if the actual temperature is below the target temperature.  In general, the better the temperature controller is, the smaller the temperature cycle and the temperature overshoot or undershoot.

3.Found this in a old post about adding a extra heating elements to a MES.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/forum/thread/63397/mes-additonal-heater-mod

Deltadude and Myself talked a lot about some of these things I would PM him with this.

Also TJohnson had some thoughts about doing somthing like you idea.
 
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OK i found the pm that Tjohnson sent me about his results when he put a hotplate inside his MES. He did try the same kinda thing and this is what he said in the PM. Hope Todd doesn't mind me posting it here.

"I have a 1000 watt hot plate and tried it inside my MES for cold smoking some bacon. The temp inside the MES affected the switch, so I had a hard time controlling the temp and abandoned the idea. The little cheapie hot plates use a little different type of Infinite Control Switch and use the heat from the element to control the on/off."
 
 
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