Before last winter, I built a heater for snow catch/cores to melt down to liquid.
I got a new toy, a FLIR C2 IR camera and I was curious as to how hot the heating pad was getting.
I
posted last fall about the construction, using an Igloo 1 gallon container, JCI controller and the 250W heating pad that I bought on eBay. The controller is an absolute must, because without it the temperature gets out of hand really quickly.
From watching the display on the camera real time, I can see that I should wait until the controller starts cycling before inserting the outer cylinder for melting. This is of course July and in winter the ambient will be lower. I have not seen any adverse effects on the CoCoRaHS outer cylinder from last winter, but these pics give me pause. It might be worthwhile to lower the temps a bit, at the expense of longer melting time.
I'll include an "outside view" picture as well, but the insulation of the Igloo was keeping the temperature not much above ambient.
Greg H.
