Another advantage of buying a Harvest Right freeze dryer on their website is all the information about the dryer itself. It’s highly unlikely that an employee at Home Depot knows more about freeze dryers than the FAQ and blog sections of Harvest Right’s website, which their engineers write.
I routed the exhaust from the catch can to a home made catch can that consisted of a jar with two ports with steel wool inside. I wanted to see just how much oil would escape the newly install catch can and collect in the jar.
I do the same with mango, using freeze dried mango that is imported from Germany. Whole freeze dried strawberries enrobed in white chocolate are amazing, like strawberry malted milk balls with that great crunch in the middle.
Do you have any vacuum gauges at all to test the pump? ( Though I doubt that is the problem based upon your tests )
When it comes to Harvest Right, they have hundreds, or possibly even more stores (they keep popping up every day) and authorized resellers across the USA and Canada.
4) I made a plastic shield to protect the main circuit board of the FDer. it simply slides into place and protects the top and both sides of the board from condensation.
1) I installed a 3/4" wide high density closed cell foam in the gap between the front of the chamber and the back of the front panel - just what Harvest Right suggested except all the way around (the first picture shows the gap). Use your fingers to push it into place. It needs to be tight against the inside panel. I then installed a vapor barrier around the entire FDer chamber. I used 7mil plastic and clear packing tape.
A bit of background on me - I used to work in a sold state fabrication lab (university research lab) and had a lot of hands-on work with ultra-high vacuum equipment. The pumping we do for freeze drying was what was required to just start
Let's do a simple math exercise. Non Frozen food put in freeze dryer at an ambient temp of 70F needs to be at -40F before the dry cycle begins. things go linear, each hour the temps would drop the food by 12.
In my opinion, the absolute best place to buy a home freeze dryer is Harvest Right. We’ve had a medium-sized Harvest Right unit for more than 5 years, and it’s still going strong. You can check out their current online sales and promotions via this link.
You can also find all info on financing programs and means of payment on websites. Also, when buying from a website, you can compare many different models on the spot, while the same may not apply when buying a freeze dryer in person.
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I am looking for a more defined "heuristic" curve based upon the internal temperature. I am sure that your engineers probably have tables for such things. I also know that different foods freeze at different rates, that is why I am asking for a heuristic answer.
Without an pump isolation valve I would expect some air to Shop Now flow back into the chamber through the pump resulting in the steady rise you witnessed. I saw the same phenomenon before I installed an isolation valve on my pump.