"Chris Lewis" wrote in message
...
According to PrecisionMachinisT :

"dale" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the tips. I found out that the company no longer has parts
for this so I will have to improvise. I can braze and silver solder
but
I think braze would be better as it would stand more heat. Don't know
even then if it gets red hot as they do on old hot plates that it may
melt brazing. I was thinking of just bolting it together at the
break.
Worth a try I guess. Cant find the wattage but I may look on the
newer models. Thanks Dale

If you need to know the wattage measure the two pieces of old element
with
an ohm meter and then do the math.

A handy calculator :

http://www.minco.com/support/ohm.php

A section of replacement element for a clothes dryer might work
well........

Ah, to a certain extent, yes. But if you try to shorten the length
dramatically
while keeping the same voltage, you'll probably burn out the element.
Even
with active and tightly coupled thermostatic control (an "antique" may not
have
such a thermal cutout let alone thermostatic control) the lifetime will
probably
be dramatically shortened.

Heater wire has a positive temperature-resistance coefficient. Which
means,
as the temperature goes up, the resistance does too, _tending_ to
self-regulate
power consumption and keep the temperature constant even with reasonably
minor voltage variation. Which means that the cold resistance is often
very much
different than operating resistance, and depending on the composition of
the heater
wire, the old coil might have the same resistance as the new coil when
cold, but have
radically different resistance at operating temperatures.

[Tungsten lightbulb filaments do the same thing, but not as dramatically
as
traditional nichrome heater wire.]

The best way to measure operating resistance (assuming nowhere on the
device is
a plate saying what the wattage is) is to somehow get the breaks fixed
temporarily, fire it up, measure operating current, and do the resistance
calculation _then_. But keep in mind that's the hot resistance, not cold.

Reducing the length of a dryer element is presuming that the dryer wattage
is
_lower_ than the corn popper (unlikely). Halving the length of the dryer
element doubles the wattage and quadruples the heat output per inch
(assuming
constant resistance, which it really isn't, but...). Given how they
engineer these
things with relatively close design tolerances (higher wire guage costs
money),
I'd expect the lifetime to be shortened no matter how good (the likely
non-existant)
thermostatic control is.

So, the most convenient yet reasonably inexpensive method of replacement
would
be to find a dryer element that roughly matches in length and wattage.

If it turns out that the OP can only find a dryer element with double the
wattage
and roughly double the length, he could cut it in half and rewire the
corn popper for 120V.

He could probably obtain the nichrome wire himself and wind his own
heater coil easily enough. I'm _sure_ there's web sites that show you
how to design heater coils using nichrome wire, ie: how to select wire
gauge for given desired lengths, wattages and supply voltages. But
I haven't looked for any such sites.

Chris,

Nice post.

--

SVL