Progressing on our heater story – did a longer test which clearly demonstrated that we don’t have enough power. Simply running a heater for 220V on 60V is not giving enough umpf.
So Serge stepped in and proposed coming back to the plan A – 220V. However first things first little bit of additional grinding was needed. I took a cool video of Serge handling that.
Next stage was to refurbish our heater by rewiring it to 220V.
Quick test revealed that all is working happily. Actually we’ve hit 160C in under 5 minutes.
Wrapped whole tube in Kapton to protect it a bit before inserting it in the external tube.
We carried on with doing a test by using a simple wrapping with 50% overlap, followed by heating it up to 140C and letting it cool down.
Tube extraction was easy and we ended up with pretty nice prototype.
While weighing ~80g it is looking perfect, however I am not convinced about its stiffness as as per my estimates two of these tubes needs to be able to carry a whole gondola.
Anyway, weekend’s goal achieved and it’s a promising start to finally start getting some good progress again!
Finally huge thanks to Serge for his never-ending support!