-
Having trouble using the site?
Contact support
Homemade Induction Annealer
- Thread starter TSloper
- Start date
If you have the material to make your own coil, I do the same brass and coiled it around a 10mm craftsman socket and it works in about 4.6 seconds
Where the hell do you find the elusive 10mm socket in the wild?
I've only seen them on store shelves and in advertisements.
I keep it locked up in the safe with my rifles
Voltage regulator on left and right side of the fan
Then is the timer/relay
Hope this helps.
I've been using this one I built
You can build the basic unit which I have
Or you can go all out like some of the people have
Geniaerick Anealler
You can build the basic unit which I have
Or you can go all out like some of the people have
Geniaerick Anealler
I have just joined this site i am from the United Kingdom,i hope you don't mind me posting on here so soon,as i am hoping to build one of these soon,is a DC 48V 25A 1200W PS,to much for a ZVS 1000W Board,as i have bought everything expect the PS
Thanks in advance
Thanks in advance
For annealing brass cases, Mostly no. Basically the circuit will only draw a set amount of current based on the coil dimensions and how much brass is inserted into it. It may struggle with something like a .50 BMG but I doubt you are doing that across the pond.
If you decide to shove a big chunk of steel in the coil for whatever reason, there is a good chance of overloading the ZVS board and frying it.
Most of my annealing on a 1000w ZVS board with the 48V supply tends to draw 12A and under up to .308 sized cases, but I only have 48V / 12.5A 600W total before my supply auto-shuts off. You'll have added headroom.
I will be doing .222,.243, 6.5 creedmoor,.and .308,whats the anneal time using the 48V / 12.5A 600W
I have another question hope you don't mind me asking again, would this Timer work, Durable Sestos Digital Quartic Timer Relay Switch 12-24V Omron Relay Ce B3S.
As i only using AC to power the PS, as I can't find no info on how to wire it up,
Thanks again
As i only using AC to power the PS, as I can't find no info on how to wire it up,
Thanks again
Does anyone one know were i can pick up 1 of these,as looked everywhere and no joy
Sestos Digital Quartic Timer Relay Switch 12-24V B3S
Thanks in advance
Sestos Digital Quartic Timer Relay Switch 12-24V B3S
Thanks in advance
I've been researching the heck out of these. with the parts list from MGNZ-Makes, im looking at nearly 500$ including the auto feeder, and a computer housing. Am I way off base here?
I also wish there was an Aztec feature in the software.
Still super intrigued though.....
I also wish there was an Aztec feature in the software.
Still super intrigued though.....
I have been reading until my eyes are running, LOL ,i got all my parts except this,have been searching high and low,
Sestos Digital Quartic Timer Relay Switch 12-24V B3S
Sestos Digital Quartic Timer Relay Switch 12-24V B3S
You're pretty close parts-wise with the auto feeder. You do end up with a very useful machine though.
One thing to consider with the cooling system is to not have it as a sealed system. I did mine with the radiator and header tank inside the cabinet. I ran it for a lot of cases and the coolant warmed up and built up a fair bit of pressure and popped off a hose inside the cabinet. The coolant is not good for the electronic components when it sprays all over them. I'm now putting it back together with an unsealed external coolant tank once I work out what I fried in it
I'm a couple hundred bucks into mine. No automatic anything and not the prettiest set up. With my manual feeding of cases I average a case every 10 seconds or less. Takes anywhere from 3.6 to 4.9 seconds a case to anneal. I was going to try and automate the process initially but I dont mind running it on manual. I set a few second delay between cycles and just run with it until I'm done. Usually a few hundred at a time. I have not had any overheating issues with the way I have my cooling water system either. I definitely wouldn't want it to come apart on me in run due to heating up.
If I ever upgrade I will probably just buy an AMP.
If I ever upgrade I will probably just buy an AMP.
Myself. All the parts are here as of last week. Now to build it...
I was nervous about building mine. Once I actually sat down and started I realized it wasn't that bad. I had fun putting it together. I hope your build goes well and everything works well.
I love mine and wish I would have built it sooner.
That looks nice. Would it be possible to post pictures of your trap door? I am having hard time visualizing how the servo moves the trap door. Thank you
Thanks. Here's pictures of it open and closed.
The trap door is some roughly 1/8" thick hard plastic from a sign or something, and it just slides back and forth through a slot on the end of the tray support. The wood block at the top of the picture also has a groove cut into it to support the sliding door. I was trying to see how compact I could keep the whole assembly, and it was a bit of a pain to get it all working properly. Shooting and related activities kind of took a back seat after I finished it, so I haven't really used it aside from testing. Other than my water pump sometimes stopping, it seems to work pretty good.
Kristian
These are excellent pictures. Trap door makes so much more sense now. Thank you.
Built my annealer in the fall. MGNZ makes board. The documentation on that firmware isn't great. It's OK, but I've had to bang my head on a lot of things to tweak it and understand why things were doing what they were and how the wiring needed to be. So, if anyone has questions, lmk, maybe I can help. Like, I had to get additional 5v power in my servo because what the board supplied wasn't enough.
Here's how I did my trap door. Designed my own platform. It's cracked, because I need to adjust some tolerances on the linear bearings. The trap door itself is high temperature G7 (like g10 but high temp).
And here's an example of it working. I've since tweaked it to run smoother. Had the timing off a bit here. I'm using a Teflon block in the middle so the cases don't melt the 3d printed plastic.
Couple of things for anyone to consider. First, the ZVS boards from Amazon are not made for their rated wattage, imo. I'm using a Meanwell 1000w 48v PSU. It will do its rated power. The 1000w ZVS board can barely accept 12ga wires on the inputs. The output clamps are flimsy and I'm roasting them. The capacitors overheat after about 15 cases or so. I've measured my voltage and amperage, and I'm full send... I'm getting roughly 25 amps at 42v (voltage sag) under load.
Second, coils. I've found 1/8 copper to be insufficient, not because of its current carrying capacity, but you get almost no water flow through it with a 12v pc pump. It's just too much restriction. When I run several cases in a row, I'm starting to get vapor in my cooking lines. I'm moving to 3/16 to see if that improves.
Lastly, some of the MGNZ makes stuff isn't up to 1000w. The amp sensor says 30a, but it won't accept wires large enough to handle more than 10a. I got a dfrobot 50a sensor instead. I'm actually considering just scrapping the MGNZ board and doing my own with better display, sensors, and controls, but at this point, I've probably got it working well enough that it's not worth it to improve.
I am currently in the process of building my own ZVS board. Look at Schematix on YouTube and his website. He's got a design for a 1.4kw ZVS board that is much more robust. I'm going to use 10 capacitors to help with power dissipation. Need to recalculate my coil for that and the larger tubing. I'm going to use copper grounding lugs for the tube connectors. Should be much more robust and allow for basically continual use.
Here's how I did my trap door. Designed my own platform. It's cracked, because I need to adjust some tolerances on the linear bearings. The trap door itself is high temperature G7 (like g10 but high temp).
And here's an example of it working. I've since tweaked it to run smoother. Had the timing off a bit here. I'm using a Teflon block in the middle so the cases don't melt the 3d printed plastic.
Couple of things for anyone to consider. First, the ZVS boards from Amazon are not made for their rated wattage, imo. I'm using a Meanwell 1000w 48v PSU. It will do its rated power. The 1000w ZVS board can barely accept 12ga wires on the inputs. The output clamps are flimsy and I'm roasting them. The capacitors overheat after about 15 cases or so. I've measured my voltage and amperage, and I'm full send... I'm getting roughly 25 amps at 42v (voltage sag) under load.
Second, coils. I've found 1/8 copper to be insufficient, not because of its current carrying capacity, but you get almost no water flow through it with a 12v pc pump. It's just too much restriction. When I run several cases in a row, I'm starting to get vapor in my cooking lines. I'm moving to 3/16 to see if that improves.
Lastly, some of the MGNZ makes stuff isn't up to 1000w. The amp sensor says 30a, but it won't accept wires large enough to handle more than 10a. I got a dfrobot 50a sensor instead. I'm actually considering just scrapping the MGNZ board and doing my own with better display, sensors, and controls, but at this point, I've probably got it working well enough that it's not worth it to improve.
I am currently in the process of building my own ZVS board. Look at Schematix on YouTube and his website. He's got a design for a 1.4kw ZVS board that is much more robust. I'm going to use 10 capacitors to help with power dissipation. Need to recalculate my coil for that and the larger tubing. I'm going to use copper grounding lugs for the tube connectors. Should be much more robust and allow for basically continual use.
Last edited:
There are some pretty awesome ideas and builds in this thread that I need to go back and read through!! Built mine using the original parts list and just slapped it together to test it out, but I plan on upgrading when I have time. I wired it all together with some 16ga wire I had laying around. The DC output is 25.1V at the power supply with 24.4V getting to the ZVS board. I used the OP's suggestion for the coil wrapping (8 ga CGW, 10 coils, 15-16mm) except I wrapped mine to .49" ID specifically for 223 brass. My coil is 1.5" tall at 10 wraps and the case mouth sits .75" up into the coil. Remington brass gets to temp in 3.1s and FC brass in 2.4s. I'm using 950 Tempilaq and adding 0.1s to the melting time. My coil does get pretty hot after some use so I only can do about 20-30 cases at a time before I have to give it a couple minutes to cool so adding some sort of cooling is in future plans. So far I've processed 600 pieces of 223 brass and everything is still functioning. I had originally started with 6 ga CGW because I couldn't find any 8 ga locally and my annealing times were 1s longer.
For loading and unloading the case, I used my Dillon 650 with the case feeder and positioned my coil so that when I ran the ram up the case was in the coil.
I haven't read through the entire thread yet so forgive me if this is redundant info but in the first few pages there was some discussion on annealing temps. I got in touch with a friend of mine that works for an ammo manufacturer and he said they anneal their necks to roughly 975 degrees Fahrenheit, actual temp depends on hardness testing from there.
For loading and unloading the case, I used my Dillon 650 with the case feeder and positioned my coil so that when I ran the ram up the case was in the coil.
I haven't read through the entire thread yet so forgive me if this is redundant info but in the first few pages there was some discussion on annealing temps. I got in touch with a friend of mine that works for an ammo manufacturer and he said they anneal their necks to roughly 975 degrees Fahrenheit, actual temp depends on hardness testing from there.
I think I’m ready to chase into this rabbit hole lol. Its been long overdue. I have an older computer tower and all it’s included parts. But more importantly, I have acquired an 1800W 40A ZVS heater board with dual fans from a work project that didn’t pan out.
I remembered seeing a couple people using this heater, so I scooped it up before someone changed their mind. Would someone with this heater please post their parts list to insure I have the additional pieces that are compatible with the extra power.
The existing power supply from the computer looks like it’s 500W, I was going to use it to power the extra fans and water pump.…and of course the RGB flashing computer lights lol.
Thanks for any insight and assistance.
jeff
I remembered seeing a couple people using this heater, so I scooped it up before someone changed their mind. Would someone with this heater please post their parts list to insure I have the additional pieces that are compatible with the extra power.
The existing power supply from the computer looks like it’s 500W, I was going to use it to power the extra fans and water pump.…and of course the RGB flashing computer lights lol.
Thanks for any insight and assistance.
jeff
Hi,
Very nice build. Would you be willing to share your STL files from the base and case drop mechanism?
Do you have any link or literature about dual layer coil? What is the height and other diameter of your coil? This concept sounds very interesting to me.
Unfortunately, some of my past work has been swiped off thingiverse and is now being sold on eBay, so I no longer publish my files.
First I watched this Youtube video
My takeaway was that the 3+2 two-layer coil gave the desired power and focus to just heat the upper case, shoulder and neck areas that I wanted to anneal (actually, it is more like 3.5 and 2.5 turns).
My coil is about 1" inside diameter (I filled the copper tubing with sugar to prevent collapsing of the tube, then wrapped it around a 3/4" piece of aluminum tubing with some paper towel wrapped around it for cushion - with 1/4" tubing you can't go much smaller than that without crimping problems). I also used some of that fiberglass sheathing to insulate the coil, but it got a little shredded during the winding process, so I removed it. It did, however, provide the perfect spacing on the coil wraps so that none of them ended up in contact with the others but are still closely spaced.
Hope this helps.
Last edited:
Just finished my annealer up. Can't get my anneal times down. 6.5 cm is 7.8 seconds. I tried a different coil with an additional wrap, and it didn't change. Currently have 9 wraps and inside diameter is 7/8". Any suggestions? My power supply is a 36v/16.7 amps 600 watt. Currently got it cranked up to 39 volts. O would appreciate any advice
Attachments
Your annealing unit looks great. Better than mine. I will verify my wraps and ID later today. My tubing is smaller. 0.135"-0.145" outside diameter. I sourced my copper tubing from O'Reillys. That would probably be the only difference between the two.
First impressions...nice build
Questions:
- what are the specs on your ZVS board?
- what diameter of copper tubing are you using?
- what amperage does your meter show while the annealing cycle is running?
Thoughts:
- MORE POWER!!! - Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor (try to get at least 90% out the ZVS boards capability)
- If you are using 1/4" tubing, the coil looks very tall...may need to compress the coil to compress the induction field, but make sure coils do not touch (see my post a couple above your first post for an option)
- Longer anneal times are not necessarily bad as long as the heat doesn't propagate down the case towards the head enough to cause problems, which is part of my concern with the height of the coil.
So my tubing is 1/8" i.d. and 5/32 o.d., its a 1000 watt zvs board. Seems that there is a delay when I run a cycle vs. When my ammeter starts showing its pulling any power. At peak its about 14 amps and 525 watts. Thanks for the help.
I ran my wiring a little different and added a solid state relay. My first zvs board was bad and fried multiple trigger modules in the process until I figured out what the problem was. Unfortunately there is no directions with those trigger modules and I kind of just messed with it to figure them out. I also leaned on my brother for help as well. Possibly a delay built in it? Is the solid state relay possibly causing a delay? In the end I might just have a few more seconds of annealing time. Attached is a picture of my solid state relay and my 6.5 hornady brass with a 1000° tempilaq(red), and 750° tempilaq(green) @ 7.8 seconds on my timer but with it having a delayed start its probably less. I have been messing around with where the brass sits in the coil and it seems slightly better
Attachments
Can you provide a wiring diagram showing the major components (and their specs...voltage, amperage, wattage, etc.) and how you have them connected and to what voltages. I see the SSR in behind your ZVS board, what look like 2 buck converters on the left, the ammeter and what I assume is the timer module on the right, but I can't tell for sure how they are connected to each other...
Here is an example from my own build
Here is an example from my own build
Last edited:
You can try making your ID tighter, if possible. That will give better coupling to the work piece.
Beyond that, it's just power. And what brass you use... My lapua brass takes about 4.5 seconds with 1000w, where Hornady might take 3.5s.
Wondering if anyone could help me troubleshoot the power supply, relay, and ZVS side of the cicrcuit. Im using MKNZ arduino to control it and that aspect is working great.
I have a 1000W ZVS and a 48v 600w (12.5amp) power supply. With the included coil (far too big for heating brass quickly) and use of an SSR relay it works but sometimes trips the arduino overcurrent sensor. If i isolate and trigger the ssr manually it will work. However, the PS really bogs down for a moment before recovering. Pulling about 6A with just the coil. Pulls about 8A with brass. If i let it run longer than 10s it cuts out and the coils get really hot.
I wound a few other coils based on my reading this and another forum. All of them do not work at all, the PS immediately blinks out and resets. Over and over. Coils are 1/8" tubing, 28mm ID, 7-8 turns. I also wound one from 3/16" in a 5 and 7 turn config. No luck.
How do i figure out if the ZVS is bad vs. the power supply? I have watercooling ready to hook up but havent yet. Im using 12awg wire for the power connectors.
I have a 1000W ZVS and a 48v 600w (12.5amp) power supply. With the included coil (far too big for heating brass quickly) and use of an SSR relay it works but sometimes trips the arduino overcurrent sensor. If i isolate and trigger the ssr manually it will work. However, the PS really bogs down for a moment before recovering. Pulling about 6A with just the coil. Pulls about 8A with brass. If i let it run longer than 10s it cuts out and the coils get really hot.
I wound a few other coils based on my reading this and another forum. All of them do not work at all, the PS immediately blinks out and resets. Over and over. Coils are 1/8" tubing, 28mm ID, 7-8 turns. I also wound one from 3/16" in a 5 and 7 turn config. No luck.
How do i figure out if the ZVS is bad vs. the power supply? I have watercooling ready to hook up but havent yet. Im using 12awg wire for the power connectors.
I have been talking to several people who have done the MGNZ build and have purchased the SSR. It appears that the SSRs coming from Amazon are fakes without the ability to handle this use. Give it a try with some mechanical way (Relay or switch) to interrupt the power from the supply to the ZVS and see if the SSR is causing your problem.
Similar threads
Accessories
Induction annealer
