Hello, Allison,

Many of us use the American Harvest food dehydrators from Nesco. I have 
had and used the same one for over 10 years and it still checks out OK. 
I would suggest checking the temperature dial from time to time with a 
nice thermocouple thermometer, especially since the out-of-factory 
calibration could be better, but the stability is about in a 2 °C window 
which should be fine. The fast airflow removes the moisture and other 
volatile products, though a white filter over the air outlet has never 
become discoloured in my testing.

I would, however, recommend using this with outside exhaust in a 
commercial application due to the possibility of someone saying they got 
sick because of it...stranger things have happened.

I like this as each 10.5-inch reel fits on its own slotted shelf, no 
spacers required.

The convert-a-tray shelves remove for laying in non-NAB hub reels.

I have both the older unit with the fan in the base and this one. This 
one is my "moldy" machine which is kept in the garage for tapes that I 
do not want to contaminate my main one with. These URLs may get split...

http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/Dehydrators/FD-60-Snackmaster-Express-Food-Dehydrator/

Also available in gray

http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/Dehydrators/FD-61-Snackmaster-Encore-Food-Dehydrator/

convert-a-tray kits:

http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/Add-a-Trays/Convert-A-Tray-Set-of-2-White/

http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/Add-a-Trays/Convert-A-Tray-Set-of-2-Speckled/

These will take reels up to 12.5 inches in diameter.

If you have 14-inch reels, the large one takes the tape pack but is 
about 1/4-inch shy for the flanges...

http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/Dehydrators/FD-1010/

and the add-a-trays to allow baking 1" tape--these are not adaptable, so 
I cut out the inner screen on four trays, making them just rings.

http://www.nesco.com/products/Dehydrators/Add-a-Trays/Add-A-Tray-FD-1000-1010-1020-1040-Set-of-2-White-15-1-2/

I have probably processed over 1000 reels of tapes through my various 
dehydrators and all have worked well. In one month, I ran 114 10.5 inch 
reels of 1/2-inch tape, each tape being baked for 48 hours because a 
24-hour bake was not enough. One reel was sent back for re-baking and 
ran through four 48-hour cycles and then played fine...it was Scotch 
226, the others were all Ampex 406, if I recall correctly.

I used the large oven to bake about a dozen instrumentation tapes 
containing seismometer signals of the Mount St. Helens volcanic eruption 
from 1980 and a few 14-inch reel master tapes.

Obviously, many of the other scientific and production tools mentioned 
are fine, too. These are a very inexpensive, small, and 
fit-almost-anywhere solution that I and others have used with great 
success and no reported damage.

Cheers,

Richard



On 2014-02-21 11:36 AM, Smith, Allison wrote:
> Hello ARSC members -
>
> We are in the market to purchase a new convection oven for baking tapes with sticky shed.  While we realize there are other methods for dealing with this issue and are exploring them, we have to work within a budget and timeframe that requires baking.
>
> The oven we currently use is not very good at accurately regulating an even temperature, so, we are looking at some of the professional brands, which can get quite expensive.  Can anyone recommend what they are using, and let me know the make / model?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Allison
-- Richard L. Hess                   email: [log in to unmask] 
Aurora, Ontario, Canada                             647 479 2800 
http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm Quality tape transfers -- 
even from hard-to-play tapes.