In reply to Joe--who asked me to keep him informed of my experiences on this subject and then blocked his PMS:
You asked me to let you know what was happening with the Annie as far as I was concerned. I am afraid I have almost nothing to report as I was waiting for word from the maker of my current induction heater to get back to me about the one I sent for repair.
I just got off the phone with them and they tested my unit and found it to be working within their specifications. This is not within my specs for annealing brass, but I really have no honest complaint since their heater was never advertised as being suitable for annealing brass. I took someone else's word for it and really, in the beginning it did work quite well. As time went by it took longer and longer to heat the brass to 650 to 700 degrees, which as you may know is not desirable when treating cartridge brass as the slow heat gets a chance to cook the entire case, not just the neck. So, I sent it back and they cleaned the contacts and it sort of worked and then got slower and slower and I think you can see where this is heading.
Anyway, I had a long heart to heart with the boss there and we went over annealing and ferrous and non ferrous metals and watts and ferrite and all that for some time and I got the distinct impression that an induction annealer of 1000 watt power (which mine is and also the Annie) is going to keep suffering these problems.
The main differences I saw between my unit and the Annie were discussed by us in the aforementioned talk.He mentioned that I could certainly take my thumb off the trigger of my unit without the need of a timer and I agreed. He contend that the ferrite core used by the annie really only makes the unit more inefficient since the magnetic flux which does the heating is in the coil and transferring the heat to the ferrite degrades performance rather than enhancing it. If you look at Fluxeon's demonstration of heating copper on youtube with the Roy unit, you will note that there is no ferrite core used . they are sending me a coil wrapped around a ferrite core in the manner seen in the Annie video at no charge and the entire episode with my unit has cost me only $18.20 to send it back -- they are returning it at their expense and charging me zip to test it.
In conclusion, and in the absence of any reply from Fluxeon to my E-mail and telephone calls to two numbers listed by them--one of which may no longer be connected--I don't see any advantage in their unit versus mine, which was never designed nor touted as an annealer and I am reluctant to say the least, to spend $500.00 + on another unit of the same wattage.
