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Heating cable source
> From: "Wehde, Mark B." <MBW01 at msmail2_mayo.edu>
> Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 09:42:00 -0500 (CDT)
> Subject: re: substrate heating
> I believe the wire Dupla sells is similiar to a wire we use for medical
> applications. It is silicon coated and very flexible. It is used for
> electrode wire for ecg, etc. The price is $1 or $2 per foot, which makes
> the dupla wire fairly similiar in price. It is more flex resistant than
> ordinary wire, but I don't believe it is any stronger. If anybody cares, I
> can find the name of the company that makes it.
No way. Dupla charges $90-140 for their cables. The one in my tank, a
50-watter, makes about two full trips back and forth, making its length
under 20 feet. That's still half the price Dupla would charge. The key
is not being stronger than normal wire, the key is being more resistive!
* Please please tell me the source for this! :) *
> >and just invest in a spool of 100 or 1000 feet... Or if we could
> >somehow insulate nichrome wire, it only costs a few pennies a foot at the
> >Chem supply.
>
> I believe nichrome would have far too high of a resistance to be practical.
>
> If I recall it is about 1 ohm per foot.
When I picked up a bunch of nichrome wire for making my acrylic bender, it
came in a wide variety of thickness, including some fairly beefy big stuff
that had far too LITTLE resistivity. I'm certain some could be found in
the correct resistance. The problem here, as I said before, is lack of
insulation and succeptibility to breakage (maybe).
- Erik
---
Erik D. Olson E-mail-o-meter:
olson at phys_washington.edu it's back up!