Michael Wong sent me the following report about his project to clean the heating elements of the FZ94, ensuring maximum heat efficiency. (I myself use a powerful blower to blast ash and dust out of the roasting chamber. First I make sure all doors and windows in the house are open so clean air blows in, and afterwards I vacuum clean the floors).
Yotam Mendelsohn from Coffee-Tech adds this message:
The gaskets are available all the time as separate item.
However, when you order heating elements, we also ship with each element a gasket.
Here is Michael's report:
I would like to share with you my day long maintenance on the FZ-94. (burners and ash cleaning)
A while back we noticed the right side burner was not heating up to its capacity (not glowing red hot).
So I emailed Coffeetech, and Yotam kindly replied with instructions for disassembling the burners from the back of the machine.
While pulling out the burners one by one, they were accompanied by huge amount of ash deposits. Very important to arm yourself with a vacuum cleaner while doing this.
Then I realized the original (cotton/fiber) type of heat insulation gaskets had all disintegrated due to long term high heat. I had an out of body experience as I wasn’t prepared for this to happen.
Luckily I googled and found a local custom gasket company, they found me the paper fiber type that can withstand high heat up to 800+ Fahrenheit.
I bought a sample sheet from them, with $5 CDN donation to their office coffee fund.
The rest was easy, just measure and custom cut to size and shape.
I used a sand paper to clean up all three burners (1000w heating elements), so the deposits were sanded off nicely. I believe long term neglect will result in uneven heat distribution along the element which might crack the unit itself. (Please correct me if I’m wrong here)
One tool I had never expected to be handy here, the office-one-hole-puncher. That made life easy as I had to fine-trim the hole size for the burners that the gasket needed to wrap around.
Please share this to the awesome FZ-94 community !
Today I learned a lot!
Regards,
Michael.
cc Yotam (thank you Yotam!! Helpful as usual!)
