6/2/10

The smoker was a sucess, but improvements can and should be made. One improvement is the door seal, it could be criticial and make the smoker even better than it is now. Another improvement would be a one wire electical system. Other than these small improvements however the smoker turned out to work very well. Yesterday Mr. Voss treated us to a chicken barbeque made from our very own smoker. The meal was delicious, and we thank Mr. Voss very much for the fantastic lunch. Overall, this project was very fun and all of us in the Advanced CAD class (Jesse, Kevin, Kyle, and Dylan) enjoyed this project very much. Jesse, Kyle, and Kevin plan on repeating this class as seniors next year, and plan to do another great project. We are very proud of what we accomplished, and greatly thank Mr. Voss for all of his help and giving us the oppurtunity to learn and achieve in drafting and manufacturing.

5/26/10

Well, the smoker has been finished. In the last two weeks we recruited Dillon Reed (Da Rook) and we went into the final stages of completing the project. As you can see in the pictures we made a pan for the chips and a cover for it. Also we installed a "Chip Adapter" which is a pipe then went the distance to the chip pan that we could put chips in and push them through the pipe to the pan with a pushing device we manufactured. (You can see in the picture with jesse holding it). Finally we put the racks back into place, and the smoker is completed and ready to cook and smoke. Next tuesday we are gonna start it up and Mr. Voss is treating us to some chickens. We will be graded on how well the chicken is cooked. Not by the taste but how throughouly it was cooked, and if the smoker worked efficiently. The blog will be updated on tuesday for further information on how our smoker worked. Also above is the Advanced CAD family picture. (Mr. Voss, Kyle Schutz, Jesse Gardner, Kevin Kilhoffer, and the rook Dillon Reed)

4/19/10

We are starting to finish the final stages of the smoker. We have the rack assembled and ready to be put in the smoker, and we are all making small adjustments, fabrications, and modifications to make the smoker more efficient. One fabrication were making is welding a small piece of metal to the lower inside of the smoker so that the heating pan can firmly rest against it and will stay in place and can be easily removed.

Once we figure out how we are going to add another assembly, we find the dimesions and brainstorm how efficient it will be. We then use the computer program Pro E. to draw out the part with the correct dimesions and print it out. We then use the print out to manufacture the part making it the correct size to fit into the smoker.

Recently Kyle and Jesse have finished the covering of the doors edges with tin, we used a spot welder to weld cuts we made into a piece of tin to have a strong bend in it so it could fit flush on the top of the door. Also we installed the latch on to the door and are going to begin testing the smoker to see if our energy source and heating will work efficiently.

Kevin has recently welded and manufactured a top trey assembly holder to support the top end of the center rod holding the meat treys in place. To do so, i have taken a 1/4 inch thick by 12 inch long steal plate. I drilled holes 8 inches apart to assemble bolts through the top cover of the smoker to fine adjust the location of the center rod. I then took a 1 and 1/2 inch diameter pipe and welded it to the center of the plate for the rod to be located in.

The electronics

The electrical circuit is very simple.

We used the oven temperature control as the high side (170-220 Deg.) the hot water temperature control will be used to keep it at 90 Deg. for cheese. We used a three way switch to go between them. The ground wire runs to the element and the tree way is set up for one leg to wire to the oven control and the other leg to the hot water control then the hot goes to the other side of the element. The oven control allows us to turn it off but the hot water side would be hot if the three way is pluged in.

3/11/10

Recently, we have been finishing the covering of the edges of the door with sheets of tin then fabricating them to size. Also we have been creating drawings on Pro E for the top rack support of our smoker. We have been grinding the door as well so that it will fit more flush when we put the tin on the edges. Also we have began to install the racks and rack support.

We are bending sheet metal and putting it around the edges to seal off any cracks that could allow smoke to get out.(left)

We dismantled an old stove to get the temperature guage so that we could easily control how hot our smoker is. We also took the heating coil out so that we can use it as our heat source.

This is our advanced CAD class at Ridgway Area School District. We are designing and building a meat and cheese smoker.