No Name Incubator Cooking Eggs?

Jason McCarthy

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Hi All - thanks to the many replies I received in the past about the egg turner not working on my JN-48 incubator. We eventually found the missing part hiding in our compost pile. Ooops!

The first batch of eggs that we hatched in the incubator (turning the eggs manually a few times a day) hatched with a great success rate - we were quite pleased. Recently we decided to put in a second batch, and got 48 hard "boiled" eggs out of the deal. We put the eggs in the incubator, went to check on them a few hours later and it was flashing 40.0 and the high temp warning. Everything inside was hot to the touch and the eggs were cooked.

The research I've done on the cooking eggs indicates you need a temperature over 55C to even begin changing the consistency. So the incubator must have been above that temperature, even with the setting at 38C. A few days ago I tried the incubator again with just one egg and some water to see if it would behave itself, and it maintained temperature properly without any issue. Of course now I'm scared to to leave it unsupervised in case it malfunctions again and does something far worse than cook some eggs.

Has anyone else ever seen this happen? Any theories on what could cause the issue?
 

Mark

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It's amazing what people find in their compost heaps :D

I've not seen that particular fault before (commonly incubators don't heat high enough) but I assume the thermostat on this occasion failed to see the set temp and kept climbing up to the max setting.

Perhaps it was a once off computer glitch? I hope so... I would run it for several days and monitor the temps then turn it off for a day and restart it to see if it stabilises again and if it does then you can probably have faith in the unit again.

I always run my incubator for several days before going "live" especially with these cheaper units (not that I have ever had an expensive Brinsea or one of the other big brands) but I would expect them to be more reliable.

Regardless, I'm prepared to accept a few glitches with a cheap Chinese made incubator at 1/10th of the price I've had lots of good results - it's a trade off I suppose. :)
 
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