Nichrome wire?

[Electric Rain]

I'm not sure if anyone on these forums knows anything about nichrome wire, but if you do I'd like your opinion on something. Do you think that, with enough of it at a good gauge, it would get hot enough for vac forming? I was wondering, because for someone like myself who prefers building things from scratch rather than hacking up commercial products, it would be a very nice alternative to the standard electric grill method.

P.S. For those of you who don't know what it even is, nichrome wire is the stuff they use in toasters. See all of the lines going across that board? That's nichrome wire.

Edit: *looks at some prices for nichrome wire* Wow... it's probably cheaper than buying an electric grill, too. 100 feet of 22 gauge wire for $8.00.

[Electric Rain]

*bump* Yo! Anyone have a clue what I'm talking about?

[Dr. KillGood]

Nope.

[daguuy]

the stuff toasters use? if it can get hot enough it would be great

[Electric Rain]

Yeah. Look inside your toaster and you'll see small lines running across a mica board on both sides of each slot. Those lines are nichrome wire, and they make your bread nice and toasty. HAIL TO the 1337 NICHROME WIRE!

[TitaniumHamster]

http://www.tk560.com/vactable4.html

This machine uses the toaster wire stuff, quite well too.

[khaag]

Edit: *looks at some prices for nichrome wire* Wow... it's probably cheaper than buying an electric grill, too. 100 feet of 22 gauge wire for $8.00.

Where did you find that stuff? I'm interested in useing it for my vacuum forming machine

[Electric Rain]

It's the first result in a Google search for "Nichrome Wire." http://www.aeroconsystems.com/electronics/nichrome.htm I mixed the price up, though. It's a little more expensive than that. $6.00 per 30 Foot Spool of 25 gauge wire, for instance. But, that's still a darn good price, and you can probably find it cheaper elsewhere.

[timmeh87]

yeah man, it totally sounds like it would work. it i was going to make a vac forming machine (which im not) thats probably how i would do it.

youre going to have to figure out the resistance per foot of wire. the more wire you use, the higher the resistance (obvi), and the higher th resistance, the less power. you can use the formula

P = (v*v)/R

to figure out the power. youre going to want to aim for somwhere around 1500W, which is about the maximum i reccomend that you try to take out of a normal wall socket (normal house wiring can only take about 15A of load, or 1800W)

and yeah, you just connect that directly into a wall socket. dont worry, its pretty safe (just dont touch the wire, you will get shocked and burned at the same time. or at least burned)

good luck. dont kill yourself.

[Nick]

Nicrhome wire, should work. Heats up fast. Use it in e-matches for setting of fireworks!