Is it possible to make a home made smoke unit by taking stranded stereo wire and cutting most of the wire strands in two except for one small wire to force the current to go through just one wire enstead of the many other strands like normal? I don’t know I’m just wondering. I havent tried it but I was afraid that it would cause a fire.
I don’t think that’s the right type of smoke that you’d want to see near your stuff. I think you might also risk the electricity arc-ing from the single wire to the thick band of wires. This means that there’d be mini lightning bolts, and that’s usually not a good thing. I’m all for saving money with homemade devices, but I think with something like this, the risk isn’t worth the reward unless you’re 100% sure of the outcome.
But, I’ve never tried it, so who knows…
Wait to hear from Bob on this one I would say. Beside I figure if it was cheaply done it would have been up here many times I bet theres more to it than that but I’m not really electric minded like bob nelson is
I don’t know that I would try this one. You may end with a SMOKING HOME UNIT, instead of a Home-made Smoke Unit.
Doug
Yeah, it would be better to just get a normal smoke unit. hahaha[(-D] I wouldn’t try it. Is it okay to install a pellet type smoke generator in a newer lionel engine and just burn the smoke fluid in it? I would probably have to reduce the number of turns of wire to make it burn hotter sense the newer trains with can motors don’t require alot of voltage in the first place.
The problem is with the material. Copper is the second-best electrical conductor of all the metals. Its resistivity is 16.78 nanoohm-meters and it melts at 1357.77 K. For things like heaters, an alloy called nichrome is much better. It is about 80 percent nickel and 20 percent chrome. Its resistivity is 1.08 microohm-meters and it melts at 1673 K. It also doesn’t oxidize easily at high temperatures. Because it is so much more resistive (about 60 times) than copper, you can use a much sturdier wire and let it get much hotter than copper. A copper wire thin enough to get hot enough to make smoke would burn out very quickly.