Risa and Martin came to help me to put it all together, but very first thanks belong to Vilem to source another 5cm pipe! Another 5cm pipe? What for? Well I’ve messed it up. I thought I am ordering the 6cm one, but it came up as the 5cm.
That 6cm pipe is intended to be the upper layer, so it is not a big deal for this time, we can still continue. Risa also prepared a thermal control circuit. Even we haven’t used it today it is ready to go.
Now let’s kick off. First problem was to provide some sort of automated way to do that wire winding. Risa and I have been discussing possible options, while Martin took Oli’s Nunchaks and quickly fitted one of its sides into to tube with almost artistic usage of some carpet-tape.
In the similar manner Martin put together a tube holder so it can rotate freely and used my cart to allow stable movement alongside the tube when winding the wire.
I took number of videos of Risa operating rotations and Martin actually doing the job. It was almost fascinating to watch all that happening.
In the next stage we’ve applied the Kapton tape to ensure that the wire winding won’t short-circuit through the tube. Risa came with a clever idea to use it long-way, instead of winding it, which instantly shown being very efficient.
Kapton-tape insulation looked awesome.
At this stage team was working on 101% and all team members practically having a gold-fever symptoms seeing it getting delivered.
Yes – that’s Risa dancing traditional Kosik’s Maori war-dance on the picture above – this completely crazy atmosphere it was!
Anyway, winding done, we’ve moved to the shed to connect it with a welder and check if Risa’s calculations were right.
On the picture above you can see the welder being connected and running 48V on 28A through our heater. Risa brought a thermal camera so a gallery with pictures showing how it was all heating up follows.
Problem with that thermal camera was that it was sensitive up to some 150C, while our hand-held IF thermometer started measuring temperatures over 240C. In the final stage I’ve asked Barca to stand as a model to demonstrate how it all works – live.
And that was it! We’ve achieved a lot this time. Heater is heating, all looks pretty stable. I’ve prepared a tiny TODO list for a next stage:
- Prepare (3D pring) a jig to separate wires to be uniformly distributed alongside the tube
- Cover aligned wires with another layer of Kapton tape
- Implement Risa’s thermal control
.. but mainly ask Vilda to get me one 60mm aluminium tube!!
Thanks again to Risa, Martin and also Vilda for a huge support, it was fun and I really enjoyed this session with you!
Cimrmani