Author Topic: Panel temp vs belt speed vs Panel height.  (Read 1433 times)

Offline Gilligan

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Panel temp vs belt speed vs Panel height.
« on: October 18, 2011, 10:43:46 PM »
So I have a Chaparral 24"x12' dryer.  It has 3 24"x12" panels lined up sequentially 12" 12" 12" (I'm sure that is probably obvious, but just making everything crystal.)  They do have gaps between them (about 5"-6" which have air vents shooting down).

If anyone has a similar setup I'd like to hear what your settings are.

Manual says to start off with 4" panel height, 8 FPM (Feet Per Minute) belt speed, and panels at 800 degrees.  For me that resulted in 260 degrees on exit from last panel.  So I slowed things down to about 5.5 FPM (it technically reads like 7 but I timed it to 5.5) and I cranked the heat up to 850.  Now I'm seeing a solid 360 and almost 390 right under the edge of last panel.

Something just doesn't seem right about any of that... but again, I'd like to hear what you guys have yours set at (especially those with internal panel temp probes.)

BTW, it takes about 45 seconds for the front garment edge to get from beginning of front panel to end of last panel.  So that's 45 seconds of heat at 4" distance with 850 degrees.  I REALLY hope that is good enough. :-\


Offline ebscreen

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Re: Panel temp vs belt speed vs Panel height.
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2011, 05:10:12 PM »
Not unknown for manufacturers to overstate their products abilities a bit.
Curing black ink on polyester garments is quite possibly what they meant.

Your settings sound pretty good. On smaller dryers I used to crank the panel
height down a bit to get a bit more throughput, but occasionally resulted in
scorches if I had a castle.