Replacing Electromechanical Relay with Solid State Relay

[kwantfm]

Going the transducer/Arduino route would be mad though, certainly would be unique.

I think that that is the mechanism that the Slayer uses...

[noidle22]

Because an SSR requires an low level DC voltage input to tell it what to do whereas a pressurestat simply opens and closes an AC circuit with no external voltage control. You would need a source of DC voltage to be supplied to the SSR when the element needs to turn on and off. The requirements to make this work would not be cost effective for mass manufacture, as you will read.

A way to implement this idea though, and is something I want to have a go at one day on my Wega if I get the time, is to replace the pressurestat with a pressure transducer, connect it to an Arduino onto which you load a program to output a DC voltage (to switch the SSR) when the trasnducer resistance is between X and Y values. This could be adjusted to be extremely precise.

However, going to that much work and expense, it's probably be better to just install a PID. Does basically the same thing except instead of pressure as the variable, it uses temperature. Going the transducer/Arduino route would be mad though, certainly would be unique.

[versatile]

hi

I've searched high and low for any discussion on this topic, but I couldn't find anything.

Does anyone know whether it is advisable or not to replace the electromechanical relay that powers on/off the boiler heating element, with a suitably rated Solid State Relay (SSR)?
I spoke to the guys that service my machine about this, but none had heard of it being done, or whether it was advisable at all. All the commercial machines they had on the shelves awaiting service had electromechanical relays. They felt that whilst they couldn't see any reason why you couldn't use a SSR, there must be some reason why they've never seen one implemented.

cheers