About Setpoint Tools

Setpoint Tools is a small set of single-purpose reference tools for trades and crafts. Each one answers exactly one question and does nothing else.

The first is Cone Check, which converts Orton pyrometric cone numbers to firing temperatures, adjusted for the conditions that actually change the answer: cone form, heating rate and hold time.

Why it exists

Most trade reference material online is either a scanned PDF you have to squint at on a phone, or an article that explains a formula without ever letting you use it. Both leave you doing arithmetic in a workshop with dirty hands. These tools do the arithmetic, and then tell you what the answer assumes.

How the figures are sourced

Every tool names its source on the page, with a link to the original. For Cone Check that is the temperature equivalent chart published by The Edward Orton Jr. Ceramic Foundation. Fahrenheit values are exactly as published. Celsius is converted, and the tool says so rather than implying the figures are Orton's own Celsius chart.

If you find a figure that disagrees with the current published chart, pleasetell me. Getting a reference tool wrong is worse than not having one.

What these tools do not do

It does not replace the published chart, and it is not a substitute for witness cones. Orton determined these equivalents in electric kilns in an air atmosphere under controlled conditions. Your kiln is not that kiln. The page includes a section on where the answer stops being reliable, and that section is not boilerplate. It is the most useful part.

Privacy, briefly

Calculations run entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere. Full detail is on the privacy page.