The first time we asked it to play nice, the pump motor decided it needed to share its bounty of electricity with the rest of the world.
We replaced the motor.
Got the wiring diagrams from Huber - which came with a proviso of “be careful, these aren’t always correct.”
Wired it back up.
Turned it on.
The Polystat CC3 decided that the atmosphere was not suffused with a sufficiency of magic smoke and rectified that situation.
Now it no longer even answers me even when I yell at it.
I’m pretty sure this toasty critter is the culprit.
Looks like it’s 2.0mm (w) x 2.25mm (l) x ~2mm (h)
Doesn’t look to me like a capacitor, resistor, diode, or transistor. I don’t play in the SMD world so I could be wrong.
Regardless of what it is, it’s fuckered.
While we await the response from Huber North America - which will probably entail something along the lines of “ship us your firstborn and $10,000 and we’ll replace that component for you” - can anyone recommend somewhere where one could obtain a replacement CC3 controller board thing? I think even a CC1 or CC2 unit could work, though I’m not certain.
The all-knowing one wasn’t very helpful, even after I determined that the correct sequence of characters to ask for a replacement unit may involve K6-CC3 or CC3-K6.
If I can’t make this play nice it looks like the proper answer may be to bypass everything, pin the pump to full, and put the compressor on some sort of temperature-controlled window switch. Arduino for the win?
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How long have you waited for a response? I’m assuming it’s under warranty.
I’ve had 3 of these Huber oil baths did same thing.
I went to Chinese ones after I had a junkyard of em
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Definitely not under warranty. The mfg date on the controller is 2004.
Redneck duct tape/arduino/ssr fix it is then I guess.
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Damn! Looks like you’ll be waiting a while. Keep us updated
Yup. We contacted them last week. I’ll update if they are at all helpful.
Considering that when the pump was determined to be NFG Huber took weeks to quote us over $8000 for a replacement I got from the manufacturer for $1100, we’re not holding our breath for their response.
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Send a video if it works! I feel like I’m it’s uncle or something.
Uncle huh? I hope you weren’t the one in charge of potty-training.
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They always boast how they will have replacements or techs to you in 48 hrs.
Interested to see how valid their claims of godlike customer service really are.
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If you’re paying for a service contract on equipment that isn’t end of life, I’m sure they’d do that.
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They always claim it’s included. But if it’s really old I understand.
For the first three years the warranty will cover that.
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Pay 2-3x what it would cost to get a comparable unit from another manufacturer and we will fix it for free for the first three years!
Uh, are you suggesting that my brand new 100k+ chiller is likely to break in the first three years?
I’m in the wrong line of work. I should design and sell lab equipment.
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FWIW, I had a couple issues with an 815 that I got at auction way out of warranty and Huber was pretty helpful tech support wise. Nothing major or critical but they were quick to help and one of the guys ended up giving us his personal contact info. Charles is who we dealt with from Huber North America.
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If you end up going the bypass route check out the Johnson controls A421 temperature control. I’ve used these several times and am considering redoing the shitty controls on my Neslab chiller with one. The only thing I’m not sure on is if the probe can be submerged or if a thermowell should be used.
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Nice find! That looks a lot like the temperature controller I got for the sous vide I built some time ago. Cheaper, too.
Unfortunately, this Huber is a 480V model, so it’s going to require a little creativity and swearing. But I think I’ve got everything on hand that I would need to trick it into being a chiller again. Except possibly a heavy duty SSR, but those aren’t too hard to find.
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Out of curiosity why an SSR? Control circuits can be easy to transform but it wouldn’t surprise me if Huber didn’t use off the shelf control components.
Yeah in theory I should be able to repurpose just about everything on there, but on the off chance they used some weird thing that I can’t effectively interface with, I can just bypass pretty much everything if I have to.
I’ve learned that sometimes it’s harder to figure out how to speak German than it is to scream at it in Bad English.
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