I roast a fair bit of Guatemalean to full city. Lately after a few roasts the roaster (R1 V2) would simply stop preheating. It would indicate P7, but the temperature would go down. When I finally asked for help, it was throwing an occasional ErC 0512.
Maybe this is obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me: my cooling tray was pointed back between the roaster’s front legs like everyone does in the youtube videos. That means the tray exhaust was blowing hot, oily, chaffy air directly at the induction board’s cooling air intake. You might want to consider:
Point the cooling tray sideways instead, and
Put it in your maintenance schedule to periodically take off your bottom cover and clean off the grille and vacuum the coils if they need it.
Flame away if I’m misunderstanding something here, but I’ve done those things and my preheat problems have stopped.
I’m not saying that this is not a good practice, just wanted to add what I’ve found after over 4 years of use and 300+ roasts. Reading this made me take off the bottom cover and check, since I’ve never ever done it, and I’ve always had the cooling tray positioned between the legs, with the fan blowing back. I haven’t connected a tube, but I do position an inline fan to suck in the air from it and take it outside. But the fan is recent, let’s say last 100 roasts or so. What I’ve found was…
A little bit of chaff. Everything looked like it just got out of the factory. I was very surprised, as I was expecting to find at least a little bit of dirt. If nowhere else, at least on the fan, but nothing. Everything looks brand new. So much so that I regret not taking a picture. I am a maintenance maniac, so after each roasting session everything is thoroughly cleaned, except the bottom part which I’ve only just opened for the first time. Anyway, I’m not saying you shouldn’t check, just sharing my experience. You make of it what you will.
Yes, if you roast large batches frequently and do not have an exhaust tube then some of the exhaust particles can get sucked into the roaster. It makes it worse the darker you roast and if you are in a non ventilated space.
We recommend vacuuming out the bottom cover as often as possible and wiping it down to remove oils.
The R2 includes a large filter which should eliminate this problem.
