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I'm a programmer by profession and building skills in metalworking and my goal is to build certain types of chemical reactors. As a learning project, I want to construct a programmable deep fryer. One of the missing pieces in my concept so far is the heating system, and during my research I have kind of fallen in love with inductive heating.

Now, my knowledge in electronics is basic at best, but I'm quite used to study stuff on demand, and I'm not in a hurry. Besides Wikipedia, I found this page to be a good primer on the subject. I'm currently working through the words I didn't understand, such as 'impedance'.

What are good resources to learn, and what are good beginner design choices for things like operating frequency of the work coil etc? What are essential safety guidelines that a more experienced person would already know by heart? Are there complications in design or construction that I can avoid by making some tradeoffs, like reducing heating power, or efficiency? Is there some equivalent of a Hello World program in RLC circuit design?

Hanno Fietz
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  • +1 to counter -1 - the question is fine - it's just the audacity that's daunting :-). Simple: Impedance is resistance to AC. Harder: ... and the component due to inductance increases proportional to frequency, the component due to capacitance decreases with frequency, the component due to resistance stays the same with frequency. The inductive and capacitive components are at 90 degrees to resistance and 180 to each other on a vector diagram (radius = amplitude, rotatioonal angle = time change) where components revolve at the frequency concerned. Whew! – Russell McMahon Mar 06 '13 at 16:39

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If you like doing things the really really hard way,
AND don't mind a good dose of 'quite a lot more costly'
AND a large dash of 'somewhat dangerous',
THEN induction heating is definitely the way to go for a beginner.

All sane and ordinary mere mortals would start with resistance heating, get a good feel for power levels, heat transfer, basic controllers, PID control, temperature sensing and more and THEN, perhaps, look at induction heating.

If having a temperature controllable deep-fryer is you main aim, and vastly stretching your brain, wallet and hours spent on development are only secondary, then you can have something basic using resistance heating working very quickly.

If you really want to pursue induction heating, declare so (ideally with certified copy of sanity accompanying) and we'll see what we can do to assist.

Russell McMahon
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  • :D Thank you for welcoming a noob that way. I'm pretty sure I do want to try induction heating, but it seems that going there via resistance heating is a totally acceptable route. I'll appreciate hints on both, however, I think I should open a new question for the resistance option, so we keep this website in order. – Hanno Fietz Mar 06 '13 at 17:08
  • Resistance heating: http://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/60017/11666 – Hanno Fietz Mar 06 '13 at 17:15
  • Does that mean it was a good welcome or a bad welcome ? :-). – Russell McMahon Mar 06 '13 at 17:26
  • @RussellMcMahon your style in first paragraph was okay and sounded like a concerned elder brother but extending that sarcasm throughout the answer (sanity thing) seems rude. – RinkyPinku Apr 25 '17 at 06:52
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Well I don't think I've ever seen an induction deep fryer :) What helped in my case as I was improving my skills in this area (same interests - induction heating for metallurgy) was to actually read an introductory text on induction circuits. I think it was a part (several chapters) of some classical book on electric circuits, unfortunately I don't remember which. It cleared up many questions better than most of the online resources, many of them - like the Burnett's site I know very well - are not meant for a complete novice unfortunately.

rsz
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