My Pro Melt is Going Back for Service

[Taterhead]

I have a 2 year old Pro Melt. I'm pretty sure that the thermostat is faulty. At a setting of 725, it has been swinging +/- 50 degrees or more. Dipping down to 650 then climbing to 800. Once, it did not cycle at all and suddenly the spout was frozen. The weird thing is that if it is running hot or cold (where I know it should cycle on/off) and I adjust the knob barely, it responds. I keep the pot between 1/4 and 3/4 full typically.

There is definitely something not right. I am literally 2 days away from my warranty end. Lucky! I spent the day casting a bunch of bullets, then drained the pot.

I'll ship it tomorrow or Tuesday. The rep at RCBS said to send it in, or they would just mail a thermostat to me with instructions for how to drill out the rivets and to re-wire it. I'd like them to do the work. Apparently if it is out of warranty, they'll send a thermostat anyway. Great service!

I've considered skipping the warranty work and going straight to PID, but thought I'd at least get it in good working order before the warranty is gone.

[Walks]

Good choice. I just sent my 35yr old back for the 2nd time 3 months ago. This time they charged me $111.00 for a full rebuild. And $30 bucks to send it to them. The temp. keep bouncing up&down, froze the spout once. So I figured to get it in while they still had parts to work on it.

So they offered to tell you how to drill out the rivets, and send you a new thermostat with instructions on how to install it. That really interests me. i'd like to find out how to do that and install a PID.

[dikman]

Walks, if you're fitting a PID all you need to do is plug the pot into the PID, turn the thermostat to max and leave it there.

[Walks]

dikman,
i have no experience with PID's, never having seen one up close. I've seen them in a video. Dude drilled a hole in the back of his LEE pot & stuck the probe through the hole to rest on the heating element underneath the pot. Guess I should have looked at more video's. I keep seeing guys putting them together, but I'm electronically challenged & broke. Don't even own a soldering iron. Still confused by the process.

[Walter Laich]

I've opened mine twice

when drilling out the rivets be sure to keep it from spinning. I used needle nosed pliers to hold it while I drilled. Go easy as you don't want to have the drill go all the way up to the chuck when you finally drill the center out (it really is an easy job. Once you get all four drilled out the top and bottom come apart.

I considered using sheet metal screws to reassemble but wanted to play with my pop rivet gun so I went that route.

[dikman]

Walks, there are lots of threads/posts on here about PIDs, best thing is to start reading them, that's what I did (I'd never heard of them until I joined this site!).

[Mal Paso]

I found a sharp wood chisel will shear the aluminum rivet's head off easier than drilling.

[EDG]

If you can figure out who made the thermostat by looking at the logo you can call them and they might send you several engineering samples.
Lid switche for my washer failed and a new one was $15. New from the OEM they were $1.75 but they senothing.samples for nothing.

[Taterhead]

Got my Pro Melt back from RCBS. Before shipping it, I removed the hardware like the fulcrum, shut-off pin, handle and etc to save shipping weight. So it was a surprise to find that they shipped it back with pretty much all new hardware. Now I have spares! Not that I expect them to wear out, but maybe I can help someone with a missing part some day.

I also received:

A new pot
New heating element
Adjustment knob,
and, of course, a new thermostat.

They pretty much totally rebuilt the machine, and I just asked them to replace the thermostat. No charge except for $17 in shipping costs.

This is the type of service that has led me to acquire a bunch of green gear.

Hopefully Sunday I'll have time to fire it up and melt some metal. Pretty happy, and hopefully this will serve me a long time now that the original Pro Melt has been sunsetted.

[evoevil]

I built a PID controller for mine at half that price and works great. I think most stats work that way on lead pots. My PID bumps the powder on and off to keep temp