Nichrome Wire

To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
Subject: Nichrome Wire
From: Erik Olson <olson at phys_washington.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 22:19:52 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <199504251939.PAA00225 at looney_actwin.com>

> From: "shaji (s.) bhaskar" <bhaskar at bnr_ca>
> 
> >From: Erik Olson <olson at phys_washington.edu>
> >
> >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). 
> 
> To build a low-wattage substrate heater which generates about 1
> watt/foot of heat, it might be sufficient to just use airline tubing
> or something similar as insulator, as Steve Pushak suggested.  Do you
> have any numbers on the range of resistances/unit length that is
> avaialble?  How much does nichrome wire cost?  And where can one find it?

Nichrome wire is incredibly cheap, but you might have to get it in a
spool. I got mine at the university's chemistry stockroom, because they
use it to make impromptu heaters for experiments.  Sources?  Maybe 
industrial wire suppliers or chemical supply houses. 

Resistance.. Hm, I don't have a handy table, but I am sure there is a LOW 
enough resistance available.  I know this because when I built my acrylic 
bender (ran on 80-120V) I had to make the wire into a coil (using a drill
and a dowell).  No doubt you can get a table of resistances from the 
supplier.

     - Erik

---
Erik D. Olson                		E-mail-o-meter:
olson at phys_washington.edu             	it's back up!