This isn't social media. Please tell us how you did it.
The part of this feedback here that Is helpful is recognizing not everyone may have fast internet, and also not everyone is a visual/audible learner. so here is a quick text based explanation. natural gas is bad, i cannot make natural gas myself. electricity is more versatile and i can make it myself. when i make electricity myself i'm richer in the long run, i'm also less dependant on external input to my life and therefore protected from external disturbances slightly more. while i cannot power this grill on my solar power system as it is i have a long standing goal to do that. I did internet research on eletric grills and most are small for condo balconies or large and expensive. inspired by these commercial units and also incorporating some of my own experience as a industrial engineer i identified several critical design parameters: a) feedback control is needed b)reducing operating costs/run costs c) use off the shelf parts when possible. d) test e) share the good idea and document it.
so i bought the cheapest oven broiler element on Amazon that had mounting flanges, i used those flanges to mount it to the aluminum body of the grill. it covers about 90% of the bottom of the grill, because IR is reduced at the square of distance, i put it as close as reasonable to the grilling racks. then to melt cheese and crisp veggies i knew that i needed heat from the top, so i found inexpensive quartz tube IR emitters and mounted them to the inside of the insulated lid. I used Kaowool for insulation on the lid because of its biological inert properties and also its extreme temperature resistance.
for feedback control i chose a capillary-type thermostat. this technology is inexpensive and also durable. it also does not have an electronic sense and actuation, its all mechanical. the NO/NC connections are rated for the operating current directly so no relays are needed. however since the one i chose is SPDT it only switches one leg of the 240v circuit, which means the elements are always at 120vac, granted they are touch safe as it is. I do plan to install a deadman timer and a DPST contactor to make the entire unit cold. the upper heaters i chose to make manual control. the reason is that the crisping/browning is largely a visual output. pizza that is just starting to have the cheese bubbles burned, compared to having the top black is human preference, maybe some of the software geniuses on this board could create an AI to do it, but for cost sake the top control is on a SPST switch and the cook must apply judgement that as needed.
The youtube video is excellently done--- well narrated, lots of visuals and graphs, details galore. To try and put that into words for the forum would be a big task and not come up to par. @Ripple4 good job!
thank you! i'm just a guy tinkering around and sharing what i feel are exciting ideas, so when that resonates with someone, i feed very accomplished!
