Going electric can be a very daunting task for the novice. A lot of people are intimidated by electricity and a lot of information out there makes building a controller very confusing so in an effort to show how simple it can be done I've decided to show how I built my controller. I have a fairly basic understanding of electricity but for the most part electricity is fairly simple to understand. Electricity is a lot like most people when they drive, it just wants to get from point A to point B as quickly and easily as possible. It's not out to kill you but if it thinks that's the easiest way to get where it's going that's exactly what it will do so some healthy respect for it is a good idea. In America we have household electricity which is 110 or 220 Volts AC. 220 is 110 twice so 2 Hot wires. Hot wires are Black (think Burnt) or Red (think Hot) and sometimes Blue. Generally this means if you are connecting 2 Hot (Black or Red) wires together you are connecting Black to Black or Red to Black or Red to Red and if you don't turn off the power the electricity will realize that the easiest way to get where it is going (to ground) is through YOU. So safety first, disconnect power before playing with wires. That electricity going through those Hot wires needs somewhere to go otherwise it just piles up like a freeway traffic jam so we need to provide off ramps to send those electrons back to the electric company to be reused, which means the electric company is selling us used electrons and charging us for new ones but there's nothing you can do about that. However if we throw a little detour in there for the electrons we can control them and use them for our own purposes after which we have to send those electrons back to the electric company which is done with a White or Green wire called a Neutral wire. A bare copper wire goes to the same place but shouldn't be used as a neutral and is generally used to ground stuff so if there is a short it will have a better route to ground instead of going through you and will trip the breaker.
So that's the basics I know about electricity, Black to Black, White to white, Copper to Ground, simple.
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Now on to my controller.
Like many things I make, my controller began life at goodwill when I came across a brand new 3 prong dryer cord for $3, that's when I started thinking about a controller and began researching. I found there was an overwhelming amount of info out there about controllers. A lot of them are so complicated it is very confusing, lights, switches, gauges, dials and all kinds of things that, while cool are not really necessary, this really complicates figuring out how to build an easy simple controller. With a little perseverance I eventually managed to sort out an idea for the most bare bones basic controller using an SSR-40 So here is what I came up with for parts needed.
from Amazon
Voltage resistance Solid State Relay SSR 40A AC 24-380V Cost $8.45 (Prices subject to change without warning)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008DF ... AZDOWP300U" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
Some people use an SSR-25 which is fine but in all honestly the 40 costs roughly the same as the 25 and can handle more power so why not go with the 40?
2PC B500K 500K ohm Single Linear Taper Rotary Potentiometers Cost $4.61
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008DF ... AZDOWP300U" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
They came with free shipping but took about a month to get here so if your in a hurry you might want to pay for shipping or buy a different 500K ohm potentiometer
A knob to turn the potentiometer
I bought a knob but the one I used is no longer a good link but it was only a few dollars and came with free shipping
If you live near a Fry's they stock many different varieties, Radio shack probably carries them too but I wasn't in a hurry so I used Amazon.
A box to put it all in
I had the box already so that was free. My box is way larger than necessary and really any box that has enough room to fit the components will work so there are lots of options.
Power cord
I'm pretty sure this is the same one I got from goodwill
http://www.lowes.com/pd_148708-58573-UT ... facetInfo=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
it is a 3 prong dryer cord price $17.99 but if I were doing everything from scratch and buying it all, including the wall outlet I would recommend this one
http://www.lowes.com/pd_172517-83-WX9X2 ... facetInfo=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
It is 4 prong so the ground is separate from the neutral but if you are dealing with an existing outlet you will probably want to match what is already there.
Other wiring I salvage from an old stove I was throwing out and some phone line that I happened to have. The phone line goes to the potentiometer.
Fan cost $5
Some people don't use fans at all but if you run this thing at 5500W for an hour and a half it gets very hot so a fan is advisable. Computer fans are cheap too, Fry's has them for as little as $3 I'm sure Amazon has them too, I got mine from a thrift store for $5 new in the package and connected it to a 12V wall wart which connects to a regular wall outlet. I bought that at goodwill for $1. I may some day add an outlet for it on the control box so it is automatically on when the controller is on but for now plugging it into a separate outlet works just fine, just remember to plug it in before turning on the controller.
220 wall outlet
What I used was this
http://www.lowes.com/pd_409856-43469-21 ... facetInfo=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
what I should have used was this
http://www.lowes.com/pd_409853-43469-21 ... facetInfo=" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
in the store they look very similar and people put things into the wrong place so I got the wrong one but since the outlet in the wall is the right one I just kept it anyway. The outlet on the box isn't strictly necessary but because I want the option to change what is connected to the controller. Recently I got a really good price on some 8Ga extension cords with twist lock connectors so I may re-do the connectors soon. There are lots of options here that should be chosen based on what kind of outlet you have to work with. Some outlets have 3 prongs, some have 4. If it is 3 prongs you don't have the extra ground so essentially the neutral needs to also serve as ground. Since my build began with the cord (which matched my dryer outlet) I decided to add a new outlet that would match it. That's not hard either but lets just stick with the build for now.
Total cost, about $25 but it would have been $40 if I bought the dryer cord from Lowe's instead of goodwill.
That's it, that's all the parts I used, I left out all the miscellaneous screws, nuts and washers because that's the sort of thing you will have to figure out for yourself.
Next I drew up a quick schematic of how I planned on assembling them and went to work. First I needed to decide how to mount the SSR. My box has lots of room but is just barely deep enough to fit the SSR so it had to be mounted sideways. I mounted it at the top just in case something got in there with it it would fall to the bottom and not get into the SSR and short it out. I marked and drilled 4 mounting holes so I could mount the SSR, then I drilled a bunch of holes behind the heat sink to allow venting, because it does no good to have a fan if the air has nowhere to go.
Next I decided where to mount the outlet in the box. I want my boiler to be to the right of my controller so I mounted it on the right side. I cut a hole to fit the outlet and drilled a couple holes for screws to mount it with.
Then I drilled a hole where I wanted the cord to go.
I also drilled a hole for a grounding lug so the whole box was grounded and drilled 2 holes in the front to mount the potentiometers. I mounted both of them because I had 2 and if one goes bad I have the other waiting where I can find it rather than in some drawer or box where I will never find it.
Last I cut a large hole in the front of the box in line with the SSR and drilled holes to mount the fan.
After all the drilling and fitting was done I deburred all the holes and sanded them all down so there were no sharp edges, I primed and painted all the bare metal everywhere except where the grounding lug and heat sink attached. I intended to paint the box white but somehow the can with a white cap had blue paint in it so it wound up blue. I left the 2 grounding spots bare so they could be properly grounded.
Now I was ready to put it all together. That was a matter of simply putting everything where it needed to go since the holes were already there. For ease of assembly I connected all the electrical stuff up before mounting since it would be a bit harder after. So like I said Hot is black or red and white is neutral and in my case neutral also serves as ground. One of the dryer cord wires goes in to the side of the SSR labeled 1 - 28 - 380 Volts - 2 and the other wire on that side goes out to the outlet. If you are running 110V these wires in and out of the SSR will be the only Hot wire you will be connecting. If you are running 220 like me the other hot wire of the dryer cord goes directly to the outlet and the neutral connects to the neutral connector in the outlet as well as grounds the SSR. The other side of the SSR has 2 wires which connect to the Potentiometer. Potentiometers come with 3 lugs but you only connect to two of them. If you want your knob to increase power by turning it clockwise you hook up to one outside and the center, if you want it to work the other direction you connect it to the other outside one and the center. Which one does which? I have no idea, my solution was to solder 3 phone wires to the potentiometer, try it one way and if that is wrong try it the other way and once I was happy clip the one I didn't need. So the box was all sorted out now I needed to connect to the heating element. That was simple enough since I am running 220. There are 2 screws on the heating element, both of them are for hot wires. For the Neutral/ground wire I made some copper washers to go under the head of the heating element to connect a grounding wire to as well as to ground the box that covers and protects the element. I also soldered a grounding lug to the small kettle to attach a ground wire to and drilled a hole in the skirt of the boiler for the same purpose. I connected a grounding wire to these and added a grounding lug to the box over the element and connected the neutral to that as well. One important thing to stress is that you need to check all these connections with an ohm meter to make sure all the grounds are indeed grounded and the hot wires are not grounded and voltage goes where it is supposed to instead of where it wants to. I even go the extra step and perform this check prior to each use just to be on the safe side. If you don't have a volt meter I recommend getting on the Harbor Freight mailing list. They send me coupons for free multimeters and screwdrivers and tape measures and all kinds of stuff and most of them say no purchase necessary, so free is ACTUALLY FREE!
So after getting everything bolted together where and how I thought it should be I filled my little pot with water and plugged everything in. I will probably add a switch some day but since I haven't yet I use the breaker as a switch, not really best practice though because if you don't remember to switch the breaker off you have an unswitched live wire in your circuit. the Potentiometer acts as a switch for one leg but the other will always be hot, so be careful if you use this method.
So everything checked, double checked and connected, I held my breath and flipped the breaker on to see if I did something wrong and let the magic smoke out of the box and to my relief nothing happened. Actually something did happen, even though the Potentiometer was set to 0 on the dial, the water in the pot started hissing and bubbling. I turned the Potentiometer up to 8 (which is max) and it stopped. This was an easy fix since I had already soldered 3 wires to the potentiometer, it was simply a matter of turning the breaker off, unplugging the controller and disconnecting one wire and reconnecting the other. Now when I tested it it worked perfectly, 0 was off and 8 was full on. I really wanted a Chernobyl setting like Goingbroke2 but maybe on the next one.
That's it, that's all there is to it, this is as basic and simple as you could possibly get It will work with a 5500W element and can heat 10 gallons of water to boiling in 20 Minutes and maintain output at 1QT Every 4.5 Minutes (actually timed at 4Minutes 28Seconds) or on the smaller kettle with a 3500W element it can heat 4 Gal to boiling in literally 5 Minutes and then slow it down to full stop or a slow drip or whatever you want. Just turn the knob to full on, in my case that's 8, then when you get to a boil you turn it back to about, there. Where is "there"? that is for you to decide, it is wherever you want it, if you want a slow drip it's one place, a twisted stream it's another, It's all subjective but that's the simple beauty of it.
(Note: Edited and Re-edited to correct spelling and other minor errors
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)