Engineering

Inside the cyclone chamber

Six vanes, one fan, and a lot of smoke testing. A look at how the heat actually moves.

July 30, 2026 · Hardware Team · 1 min read

The chamber went through eleven revisions. The one that shipped is the simplest of them — six fixed vanes and nothing that moves except the fan.

Smoke first, food later

Before anything was cooked in it, the chamber was mapped with theatrical smoke and a slow shutter. Dead zones show up as still grey patches.

Shortening the vanes by four millimetres removed the last dead corner and dropped preheat time by nineteen seconds.