anne
Neophyte
Posts: 10
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Post by anne on Sept 2, 2014 10:53:09 GMT -5
I had set up my santha with a 4lb batch of white chocolate (which for me is a 2lb cocoa butter, 1lb sugar, 1lb milk powder) and I'd left it running all day, occasionally scraping the sides and checking it's grittiness. Then around the 10hr mark the bowl stopped spinning and it started smelling of burning! Does the santha overheat if left on too long? Should I only ever be running it for 8hrs at a time or something?
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gap
Apprentice
Posts: 390
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Post by gap on Sept 2, 2014 16:43:53 GMT -5
I have comfortably left a Santha running for much longer than 10 hours. Maybe the belt has worked its way loose (stopping the bowl) and rubbed against the motor (smell of burning)
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anne
Neophyte
Posts: 10
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Post by anne on Sept 7, 2014 11:06:30 GMT -5
Took it all apart (many thanks to this post chocolatetalk.proboards.com/thread/1430/removing-rollers-wheels-spectra-11 for telling me how) Turns out so much chocolate had built up in wheel that it had completely frozen, I had to use a hammer to get the wheel off at all. The wheel freezing made the bowl not spin, therefor the belt was shredding/burning. So this explains what happened, but I'm not sure how to prevent it from occurring again. Especially because when I was cleaning everything the wheel that froze had a chunk of plastic fall out of the inside. That wheel has more holes on the inside then the other and the hole for the rod seems off center. I set up a batch of chocolate for 5~6 hours as a test and at the end of it that wheel was far stiffer then the other, I could almost not turn it by hand. Is this a defect with that wheel? I think I might need to replace it :/
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Post by macpowell on Sept 9, 2014 0:46:18 GMT -5
What temperature is the white chocolate? The original belt is crap and Santha knows it. I am sure your cacao butter would lubricate the wheels at the right temp.
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anne
Neophyte
Posts: 10
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Post by anne on Sept 9, 2014 10:17:00 GMT -5
I didn't think to check the temp when I took out all the chocolate but it was flowing freely and not behaving as if it was cooling/crystallizing. And I had melted my cocoa butter completely before I put it in at the beginning, it was around 110~115 if I recall correctly. So I doubt the heat had anything to do with it, and there was a small amount of lecithin in there and it wasn't thick. The other wheel was fine, it was just one wheel that had an issue which is why I'm not sure about that wheel anymore.
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Post by macpowell on Sept 13, 2014 21:15:55 GMT -5
The starting temp is good, and the lecithin good, it sounds like a manufacturing tolerance defect, you did nothing wrong, mine gets warmer as it runs, I throw nibs in but always with a little liquid cacao. I would not hesitate to do what you did.
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Post by Brad on Oct 18, 2014 2:25:44 GMT -5
I've left mine run for as long as 40 hours. You just need to make sure the chocolate is kept very warm.
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