{"id":2056,"date":"2012-04-04T07:38:17","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T11:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2024-06-03T18:09:28","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T22:09:28","slug":"diy-custom-heating-element","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/diy-custom-heating-element\/","title":{"rendered":"DIY Custom Heating Element"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nA few years ago I made a BBQ smoke generator<\/a>. I was fairly happy with the design, but felt that for the “next time” I would make a few changes. <\/p>\n

One of my main issues was the size. I really wanted to make it smaller, but I didn’t want to pay for a small cartridge heater.<\/p>\n

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that I might be able to modify a stock toaster-oven heating element to make a smaller heater. If I cut out a small section and drove it at a proportionally smaller voltage, I wondered, could I get a small heater with the same temperature as the big boy? It turns out that the answer is yes.
\n<\/p>\n

I went through a few fits and starts getting this thing to work. My main issue is that I’m still learning to weld, and welding wire requires a lot of finesse. I’m not going to bother with the trials and tribulations though. Here’s how I made a custom heating element:<\/p>\n

Cut to Length<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nA heating element is a nichrome coil embedded in a steel tube using ceramic. In a toaster-oven they wire 2 in series, so each element is designed to see 60V. I had a 12V power supply, so I wanted to use 1\/5 of the total element length. A pipe cutter made quick work of the cuts.<\/p>\n

Ream<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nI needed to attach metal contacts to the wire. To give myself enough wire for a bond, and to have room to support the contact, some free space would be required. A metal file and some elbow grease left me with a 1\/4″ cavity at each end of my cut section.<\/p>\n

Weld<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Attaching things to nichrome is a tricky proposition. Because it gets so hot you can’t use solder, and mechanical connections are unreliable. I decided TIG welding was the way to go.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nEasy in theory, blindingly difficult (for me) in practice. In the end though, welding for 250mS at the lowest setting created a permanent bond bond between contact and wire.<\/p>\n

Insulate<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nTo keep this welded bond electrically isolated, and to give the contact some rigidity, I filled the previously-created cavity with furnace cement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nNext time around I might do this in several small additions rather than all at once. I think that would give me a more solid fill.<\/p>\n

Burn Baby Burn<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIt actually works! I applied 12V to the element and was easily able to make some wood smoke. It didn’t get red-hot, but I suspect this is because my cut section was a bit long. At any rate, I’m really excited at the prospect of making inexpensive small heaters for use in my projects. I should probably get some more welding practice first though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago I made a BBQ smoke generator. I was fairly happy with the design, but felt that for the “next time” I would make a few changes. One of my main issues was the size. I really … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mechanical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7202,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/7202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brettbeauregard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}