Recovering Nichrome Wire From Unexpected Sources

April 10, 2014 by James Hobson 41 Comments

115b-guitar-hero

Don’t you hate it when you’re in a pinch and all your favorite surplus or electronic stores are closed? You’ve gotta finish this project, but how? He’s a nice real hack for you guys. How to recover nichrome wire from a ceramic heater!

Necessity spawned this idea, as [Armilar] needed to make 45 cuts in two pieces of foam in order to ship some long circuit boards. Not wanting to make the 90 cuts individually, he improvised this nichrome slicing jig. Not having a spool of nichrome handy, he decided to use a less conventional method. He pulled out a sledgehammer and smashed open a ceramic wirewound resistor.

According to him, nice big ceramic resistors like this 10W one have about a meter of nichrome wire inside! After breaking the ceramic, it’s quite easy to remove. He made up a jig using nylon spacers and rivets, and then wrapped his wire back and forth across the whole length. It worked perfectly — though he was using 240VDC @ about 1.2A…

If you don’t need such a complex setup, there’s always the bare bones wire foam cutters we’ve featured many times before.

DIY Foam Cutter Makes It Too Easy

January 26, 2014 by James Hobson 39 Comments

Cutting foam is pretty tricky without a hot wire cutter. Don’t have one? Well, lucky for you, [Darcy Whyte] has a guide on how to make one. It takes just over an hour to build, and it costs next to nothing in supplies!

[Darcy] is using an old 9V power wart that he had lying around, but you can probably use any DC power supply. He designed the frame in SketchUp and cut it out with his CNC router, although a saw will work just as well for MDF. A piece of 40 gauge nickel chromium wire was strung taught between two 1/4-20 bolts, with one held back by a spring. The spring acts as a safeguard to prevent snapping the wire during overly aggressive cuts. This may be a simple build, but it does produce a handy tool.

[Darcy] demonstrates cutting foam with his creation in a video after the break. We think he could cut thin plastic with it as well—modify your 3D prints, anyone?—though he may need to crank up the voltage a bit.

Continue reading “DIY Foam Cutter Makes It Too Easy” →