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Clare Snyder Clare Snyder is offline
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Default Do you have the electronics skills to design a good home made smoke machine?

On Fri, 15 Dec 2017 14:22:41 -0500, rickman wrote:

Arthur Woodwrote on 12/15/2017 12:46 PM:
trader_4 wrote:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N2XYORX
That's what I was telling him about in the other thread here, that I've
heard people have used one of those disco smoke gizmos. See Hpressure but it is s you
should be able to rig up something to pipe it in. Plus, with a boom box
and some songs, you can have a business at parties and weddings as a DJ.


I thank you for coming to my aid, and I apologize for not having "believed"
in your previous suggestion. (See below why.)



They don't use a fan. They use a liquid pump to squirt the fluid
through the heater, which vapourizes , producing steam pressure. No
fan. I have onem and I've had it apart. The poressure is reasonable,
but I'd say less than 5 psi. Commercial smokemachiners run somewhere
around 1 - 2 PSI maximum.

The only olproblem I see is getting the HOT smoke (really more like
steam) into the fuel system you are testing. It will melt a plastic
hose attached to the output - so you need an adapter that acts as a
cooler as well - which WILL reduce the pressure somewhat.


If so, I don't see why it's not perfect for the task - if it generates the
smoke at enough of a pressure to get us a couple of psi for a long period
of time. It has to be in the goldilocks range of a few psi (maybe 2 to 4
psi?).


How did you come up with that number?


The output is 2000 CFM, which seems like a lot.
Is there a way to *convert* that to PSI?


Not really. Most likely they are using a fan designed to move air against
very little pressure, like the "muffin" fans in a PC. They will move a
decent volume of air at very low pressure, but the air flow falls off very
quickly as the pressure increases. The only way to know for sure is to get
the spec sheet of the fan.

Here is a spec sheet of a typical DC cooling fan.

\



http://www.nmbtc.com/content/pdfs/08015JE.pdf

Notice the flow goes to zero at pressures around 0.1 inches of H2O. Your 2
psi would be 55 inches of H2O.

Maybe they are using a different type of fan, but I don't think y


ou are
going to get 2 psi from one of these machines. Maybe you could rig your
compressor to it to boost the pressure.


The "wired control" might even be useful for one-man operation while
debugging a vaccum leak on an engine.

The machine holds 0.5 liters (1/8 gallon) where a gallon of the fog juice
(propylene glycol perhaps?) is $20 which means the machine, over time, is
cheaper than the fluid used to make the smoke!
https://www.amazon.com/Gallon-Great-Party-Fog-Machines/dp/B005UQPPK4/ref=pd_sim_267_1/135-2052768-3676406

So I do agree, for forty something bucks, it's about the same cost as what
it cost me to make that tin-can smoke machine that didn't work.
https://www.turboimagehost.com/p/368...moke1.jpg.html


The same cost for something that also isn't likely to work without
modification.

Any idea how to calculate the PSI out from the 2000CFM spec?


See above...