Modifications to the Masterbuilt MES 130B food smoker
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LenShustek/smoker_mods
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This is a repository that documents my modifications to the Masterbuilt MES130B food smoker. It's a serviceable appliance, and we've made some great meals with it, but it suffers from a number of defects. You can read my posting to www.smokingmeatforums.com about them in the file forum_posting.txt. The first modification I made is to keep the smoke production going when the main (and only) heating element turns off to allow the temperature to come down. I put some heating elements in the bottom of the wood chip tray, and turn them on periodically whenever the main heater is off. The details are in the chipheater directory. There are two 100W heating elements wired in series, so 50W power dissipation. To control them I tapped into the 4-wire cable (ground, 5VDC power, heater on, and temperature sense) that goes to Masterbuilt's controller, and connected a little circuit that switches a small solid-state relay. A knob adjusts the duty cycle: it's on for 10 seconds and off for 2 to 18 seconds. It seems to be working fine. The second modification was to replace the Masterbuilt controller with one based on an inexpensive PID (proportional-integral-differential) controller, interfaced to the smoker with a small circuit. This keeps the temperature at the set point within a degree or two, rather than having huge overshoot and undershoot by 10-15 degrees in each direction, with a cycle time of about 15 minutes. The details are in the PID_interface directory. In particular, see the PID_addition_instructions file for instructions and photos. This modification doesn't require the smoker unit itself to be taken apart, or any of its 120V AC wiring changed. Len Shustek 13 November 2020 updated 29 November 2020
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