Prometheus Pro-7 - First Impressions after a few days use

[Fruddy]

well, although I have never had a kiln before, so I don't have anything to benchmark it by, I thught that I would let you all know what I think of the Prometheus Pro-7 after having now used it 5 times.

Thinking about it, being a newbie with kilns is actually a good thing, because it demonstrates how easy it would be for someone who has never had to use a kiln before to programme etc.

Being honest, the instructions that came with it weren't great - they were very detailed, with lots of technical drawings of graphs and charts showing different temperatures and lots of other information, which to a newbie technophobe was a bit frightening and off-putting - Indeed it took me 5 days to screw up the courage to actually switch the thing on!   The manual also contained three "sample" programmes, none of which were really helpful as regards bead-making annealing schedules, but then the kiln is not primarily a bead kiln, so that is understandable.

Martin sent me some good "idiot" notes and Poledra on here who has a Pro1, also very kindly sent me some instructions.     I ran a basic fire with it empty, when it ramped up from room temperature to 520 degrees c in two hours, held it there for an hour and them ramped it down to 250 in two hours.

I have since then used it for garaging beads whilst torching, when I held the temp for 3 hours and then cooled it down and last night ran a batch annealing session without any problems.

So - the verdict!  

A fantastic little kiln and can highly recommend - I love it!

I will post some step by step instructions for both a batch anneal and an anneal as you go programme and then put it on the Wiki, in case anyone else buys on in the future.

Rachel

[Fiona]

Thanks for this Rachel.  I'm a newbie and I've been thinking of getting this kiln when I've eventually got the money so any tips on how to use it will be great as I know nothing about kilns.

Fiona

[Redhotsal]

How easy is it to get the beads in - how many do you think you can get comfortably through the bead door - does it close easily onto the beads? Just curious as the door looks small on the photo of the kiln.

[Fruddy]

How easy is it to get the beads in - how many do you think you can get comfortably through the bead door - does it close easily onto the beads? Just curious as the door looks small on the photo of the kiln.

Hi Sal,  the other evening I made 10 big hole beads, 5 focals and about 15 other, smaller beads and fitted them all into the kiln with ease.  The bead door is easily large enough to put the mandrels in and the inside of the kiln is large enough to be able to close the bead door fully - the inside is slightly larger than the SC2, although the kiln is the same size externally.

The only thing that you have to remember, is when moving beads over, you need to use some tongs, as because the whole mandrel is inside the kiln, they do tend to get a bit warm!

The bead door is large enough so that you can move the beads over to the left each time that you want to put a new one in and I managed to have at least 20 beads all side by side before having to stack them up.