Does anyone have experience tempering bean to bar using a wheel machine? Ideally I'd like to get a…

@ChocolatePhil – at just 50 pounds per week your best solution is probably learning to temper by hand – especially if you are going to be making more than one type of chocolate – or, if you don’t mind adding a tiny bit of cocoa butter, use silk (e.g., from an EZ-Temper). Going forward, having the experience of really knowing what temper is will help you.

I did see a novel idea where someone was and-tempering but using a small chocovision machine to hold the tempered chocolate.

None of the solutions you mention (wheel machine, FBM Quadro, Savage melter) will address the issues of depositing the chocolate into molds and that’s hard to automate on a very low budget.

Right now my batches are only 8-10lb (although I would prefer to be able to mold and temper larger batches (20-50lb range.) I wouldnt be doing more than 50lb a week any time in the near future. I’ve found a used 30lb wheel machine for $2000CAD, I’d prefer one of the FBM Quattros or Savage Bros but they would cost me well over $5000 which is a bit out of my budget right now

@ChocolatePhil – One challenge with wheel machines is that they need to be constantly watched to be sure they maintain temper. This is because they tend to have large surface areas that radiate heat into the room. This becomes more of a problem the cooler the room gets. That said, a lot of people use them and like them. Using silk instead of seed makes sense, though if you know how to hand-temper you can create your own seed. (And I highly recommend knowing how to hand temper so you can recognize when your chocolate is in temper – despite what the machine says.)

What’s your budget for a machine and how much chocolate do you have to temper at a given time/and per day? It’s hard to know what’s the best to recommend when there is no idea of those basic parameters.