I should have knocked on wood.....

Recently I was reading about someone's problem with their kiln and thinking that I was lucky. After four years of firing the kiln regularly (probably on average 4x week) I have had no problems with relays or elements. Well I shouldn't have had that thought because now I have to amend the above to say that I had had no problems with relays or elements. Friday night, after taking almost a week to assemble a pair of panels on meditation, I put them in Old Faithful, set the schedule on the controller and turned her on. I expected the glass would be annealing when I got up in the morning. Saturday morning when I went downstairs to check on the firing I could hear the alarm going off and the controller was flashing some unfamiliar letters. The kiln was at 1175 and the elements appeared to be glowing. I had to find the controller handbook, which only took me three minutes (a miracle since I haven't needed it since 2002), to interpreted the message -- Failure to Heat. Argh. So when I take a second look at the kiln what I realise is that the top elements in the lid aren't glowing, only the side elements. I guess this means I have to replace the elements or the relays. And I guess that means I need to give a call to the JenKen on Tuesday (Monday is too busy a day for me unfortunately) to order whatever I need to replace in there. Time for me to draw on my engineer/tinker genes from my dad....

The panel is tack fused at 1175. Whoever thinks the process is all about the temperature is at least partly wrong. What I wonder is what is the lowest temperature at which you may be able to achieve a process. Now I just have to hope the panels don't crack because of lack of annealing until I get them back in the kiln and re-fired....