Overview
An important factor in the way glazes fire is the kiln firing schedule. For example, the schedule can be the sole difference between getting a crystalline matte of one color or a highly glossy glaze of another color, or, it can be the cause or solution of many glaze and body defects. Insight-Live enables you to define firing schedules and link them to glaze recipes. You may wish to enter different schedules for each kiln you use, since each will have its own limitations.
The firing schedules manager panel is on the left, under the recipes manager. Click the Show button to reveal it. There are buttons to add a new schedule or delete an existing one. To delete, click the checkbox in front of the schedule you want to delete, click the confirm box, and click the Save button (if "Show Delete Confirm checkboxes" is not checked in your preferences page, there will be no confirm checkbox shown here).
When you click a schedule name in the list its detail displays in a panel for editing.
The Edit Panel
To add a step click the "Add a Step" button. Note that this button does not save changes, if you have entered any information, be sure to save it first. To delete one or more steps, click their checkboxes and then the "Delete Steps" button (it is live like the add button, be sure to save any changes first.
You can enter a name, description and notes, specify Celsius or Fahrenheit and choose the type (rate of increase or hours:minutes to reach the temperature). Rate scheudles will entitle column two as "Degrees/hour" whereas period schedules will title it "Hours/minutes".
Use the Save button to save your changes.
To print a report click the Report link.
Importing Firing Schedules
When there are no existing steps in a firing schedule, an Interpret button will replace the Delete-a-Step button. This button looks for the text to interpret in the Notes box.
Organize the data into your spreadsheet software using columns for Step number, Rate (degrees), Temperature (degrees) and Hold (in minutes).
Copy the block of cells to the clipboard (not including the column names if there) and paste it into the notes of the firing schedule (the columns need to be separated by tab characters, it is normal for spreadsheet software to do this when copying cells to the clipboard). Finally, click the Interpret button and the steps will be added.
After an interpret, the data in the Notes box remains, so you need to remove it and click Save. If there is already text in the Notes box prior to importing, you can paste the step ahead of the text and Insight-Live will ignore the text (because it does not have tabs in the lines).
Linking a Recipe to a Schedule
Note that for this to work, only one recipe can be open (the one to which you want to link the schedule).
Open the recipe and then unhide the Schedules. Then check the schedule you want to link and click the Link icon below the list of schedules (highlighted in yellow above).
After the link is set it will be listed below the total for the recipe.
To Remove a Link
Put the recipe into edit mode and then click the delete checkbox in front of the schedule listing. Then save the recipe to remove it.