How many watts is the element? Most oven burners are high wattage and 240v
Since you posted this in the "Cold Smoking" area, I would take it you want a cold smoker. An oven element may be too high powered for that purpose but would work great for "hot" smoking at 220* or more. Although with a PID setup, you could keep the temps down for cold smoking, but the element would not run hot enough to generate smoke from chips in a pan. You would have to use either another smoke source (smoke generator or smoker tray like the ones Todd makes).
I would think if anyone has a oven element in a cold smoker they will jump in here in a few with their thoughts.
An electric heating element at it's core is an electric heating element. It gets hot as long as electricity is applied to it. Does not matter if it's a hot plate or a oven element, the basic principal and electrical process is the same.
I think most of the people who use hot plates do so because they are inexpensive, readily available, and compact in size. You can often find them for a few bucks at a yard sale or under $15 new at Walmart. If you do use a hot plate, they normally have some sort of temperature limiting device that when put inside a closed container such as a smoker, will shut the electricity to the element off at certain temperatures. You usually have to bypass this to get the element to stay on long enough to keep generating smoke from your chips (or use one of Todd's AMZPS trays or tubes). If you bypass this by using a PID controller setup, it may get too hot for the housing in a closed area so you may need to take the hot plate element out of the stock housing. I tried a Walmart hotplate in my
WSM "as is" years ago and the temp limit device was a problem so I called it a failed experiment as I was not going to make an external controller at the time. That being said, the Brinkmann electric element is a 1500 watt element that has no temp control and is on 100% when plugged in (it's a raw element and an electrical cord with a wall plug on one end). But it's for purely hot smoking.
You can use a PID to switch a SSR (Solid State Relay) which controls your high amperage current to the heating element. Does not matter if it's a hot plate element or a oven element, it all works the same. There is a ton of info on how to wire PID and SSR units in the forum.
Just remember, this is real electricity at potentially dangerous (lethal) voltages and amperage in these devices. If you are not comfortable wiring something like this up, seek help from someone who knows what they are doing.
