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I burned out my popcorn popper the first week I started this hobby and after reading many, many posts of fellow builders, I came up with this set up using a variable temp/variable fan 1500 watt Porter Cable heat gun. A crank style flour sifter was used to agitate the beans. I cut 3 of the 4 "beaters" so I could bend them and prevent the sifter from jamming when cranking it. (If you cut 4, you just broke it!) I couldn't think of anyway to get a thermocouple into the beans to measure the bean temp. I did measure the temperature in the flour sifter(empty) at the closest point to the heat gun and adjusted the gun to give me 350 degrees there. I then adjusted the dial to give me a reading of 475. I marked both of those points on the dial. I start the roast at 350, hold for 4 minutes and gradually increase to the second mark over about 3 minutes and then hold at 475 till finished.
I'm roasting 100 grams of beans, hit first crack around 7 minutes and second crack around 9 to 9.5 minutes. The aluminum duct goes to an air to air heat exchanger I built for my workshop and ended up working well as a chaff collector and lets me recover some of the heat for my workshop!
The open frame design keeps everything pretty cool. The aluminum angle stock is 1X1X1/8 inch...everything else scrap plywood.
I'm pretty satisfied with it. Thanks to all of you for posting your ideas!

penger100