In any sector – whether biotech, food production, or pharma – adopting high-capacity freeze dryers helps improve efficiency and business sustainability while meeting regulatory obligations.
4. Vacuum Pump Issues: If your machine is not reaching optimal vacuum levels, check for leaks in seals or hoses that could hinder performance.
. We have some really great 'techy' type guys here who are, as they have been exploring the FD mechanics and sharing that in their posts, writing what is turning out to be a 'troubleshooting manual' for us less capable folks.
I have one of those hand held heat guns (inexpensive from HF), but I was afraid of accidently burning the insulation. My gun gets very hot! I do the same technique with a fan, shock the ice and listen for the cracks as it separates from the chamber wall.
When my son goes to college in a few months, we will send him with many freeze dried meals and continue to mail them to him as needed. Most colleges don’t have safe gluten-free options, and while in an ideal world my son would be able to cook all his own food, I know that’s not practical or likely. Freeze dried meals on hand are an easy way to keep from being cross contaminated at the cafeteria!
I want my son to have great meals on Thanksgiving and Christmas, just as the rest of us do. And it’s not feasible for me to cook the entire meal for a huge crowd.
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.
After buying our freeze dryer I was naturally curious as to how it "knew" when something was done, since batch times varied so much depending on what was being processed. Watching the cycle times didn't seem to tell me anything at first -- especially without website a thermometer to tell me what was happening inside -- until I finally caught on that applying heat to the frozen food affected the vacuum, which provided the measure of how dry the food had become.
This is why so many people are buying their own freeze dryers to use at home. The market is essentially cornered by Harvest Right, which isn’t a bad thing since their quality and customer service are both superb.
Without an pump isolation valve I would expect some air to 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.
Remove all ice every oito hours of drying time. It is amazing how much faster the drying time drops doing this. A side benefit is water vapor does not contaminate the oil as fast. I've gotten up to 20 cycle per oil change by carefully monitoring the oil and water.
Granted, most of that time is the freeze dryer doing all the work, but the process is not without effort. Once the food is ready it must be put into appropriate containers with oxygen absorbers and sealed properly so they can last.
Both pumps come with an oil mist filter. However, the Industrial Pump’s oil mist filter allows for pelo oil spray at all and it will last much longer.
Howdy! My name is Morgan I’ve been prepping for over 10 years and teach others to be prepared for emergencies and disasters. Learn more!