Poor's man 19kW load resistor !

Doctorbass

100 GW
Joined
Apr 8, 2007
Messages
7,499
Location
Quebec, Canada East
Time for sharing a great idea for when it come to test battery power and energy at high rate !! :twisted: !

[youtube]u-qo6sjzS-Q[/youtube]

Doc
 
I have this old spool of nichrome lock wire prob about 300mts, gauge ~20ish It's high resistance wire not really used for electrical applications. I pulled about 15mts of it turned it into about 7 parallel strands of aprox 2mts all coiled up. I can dump about 30amps through it. To adjust for variable voltage packs I clip wherever along the wire to get the appropriate resistance,up 1.6ohm (of the top of my head). It glows red hot but I've got it suspended. Very low tech, a few cents worth, works well. It will only handle about 1kw atm but it is easily scalable prob up to x5, more with extra effort. Warms my hands on a cold evening as well. Its like a massive toaster :)
I imagine you'll have a decent space heater on your hands with 10hairdriers running full tilt- got earmuffs?!? Love to see them in action!
K
 
:lol: this is really funny!
I really enjoy your quirky vids for the extreme enthusiast.

excuse my ignorance, but is there an advantage of using the hairdryers over a bunch of electric kettles?
 
would a standard electric hot water system be compatible in order to reuse the heat created?
 
excuse my ignorance, but is there an advantage of using the hairdryers over a bunch of electric kettles?
would a standard electric hot water system be compatible in order to reuse the heat created?
no matter if you use hair dryers, kettles or hot water systems. they are all ohm's loads. therefore you can input DC and use them as load.
 
north and south america hair dryer are about 10 ohms minimum resistance.

And for me what matter are:

-how much watt per $
-how low the resistance is
-can it run on DC
-i dont need something else to use with to be 100% ready to work...
-price is very low
- can they work for extended period of time.

Hair dryer are difficult to beat for that. these are soem of the only that have a blower that also work on DC ( the bridge rectifier make DC go straight to the motor).. no induction motor problem... :wink:

Doc
 
I actually use a small desktop heater for the same thing. lol.

the only problem I have is its fan still has to be plugged into the wall.. but it makes a nice stable load.
 
That's an excellent price $/watt of fan powered load resistor! Nice find!
 
Cowardlyduck said:
Great stuff Doc!

You should make something useful from them also...why not make a super awesome snow blower/melter. :lol:

Cheers


Yeah.. in fact i might try making a Dyson style quick hand dryer lol... but i'll need 130A on 120V or 65A on 240V lol!!!

Doc
 
Doctorbass said:
Cowardlyduck said:
Great stuff Doc!

You should make something useful from them also...why not make a super awesome snow blower/melter. :lol:

Cheers


Yeah.. in fact i might try making a Dyson style quick hand dryer lol... but i'll need 130A on 120V or 65A on 240V lol!!!

Doc

Doc

Perhaps a dryer array for your bathroom so you step out of the shower, flip it on and try to avoid your body combusting. :)
 
You look nothing like your profile pic!
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maybe you need a white wild hair wig, and goggles before you make any more videos. :lol:
 
Takemehome said:
I would like to see the face of the seller when he saw your head.
Ten hairdryers ?
Really ?
For you ? :lol:

in fact it was very funny! :mrgreen:

Doc
 
heheh!! heating elements work great. The older Haas CNC Mills use conventional stovetop coils up on top as resistive loads for excess energy from the spindle/power circuits... You could pay out the ass for replacements from Haas (after 10+ years they could burn out), or just go to an appliance shop and buy em for nothing. too good :p

on topic, you could also hook up electric kettles or boilers and convert the waste energy to steam power ;)
 
one further note on this, another route for effective load for dissipating energy to heat might be 240V-style water heater elements, which are usually about 4500-5500 watt rated... could probably pick them up for about 15-20 bucks a pop. no need to heat up the air either, just screw em or drop em into a container of water, and flush that heat down the drain... or make some tea and take a bath or whatever. just don't put the heating elements directly into your bath while you're in it :p
 
Do hairdryers have a built in cutoff when they get too hot or are left on for a certain period of time?
 
brumbrum said:
Do hairdryers have a built in cutoff when they get too hot or are left on for a certain period of time?
all that i have DO. easy to test. just cover the input/back side with your hand so no air can go in. the thermoswitch will engange within seconds and turn of the hairdryer.
 
izeman said:
brumbrum said:
Do hairdryers have a built in cutoff when they get too hot or are left on for a certain period of time?
all that i have DO. easy to test. just cover the input/back side with your hand so no air can go in. the thermoswitch will engange within seconds and turn of the hairdryer.
Many of them do not have reset able thermal switch, they have thermal fuse. In case of fuse it is 1 time experiment. :lol:
 
I am looking forward to see the hairdrier array in action :)
 
I remember as a kid using some old hair dryers in the schools bathroom to dry off my shirt and clothes. These hair dryers had some kind of overheat protection and would shut off. So I'd have to keep going from hair dryer to hair dryer lol.

Just something to keep in mind, as these may not be designed to be run for more than about 5 min continuous.... They might start melting if they have no overheat protection. :shock:
 
Overclocker said:
v3M7Wlb.jpg


inside the dryers are coils of nichrome wire. so skip the dryers and get nichrome wire. so easy to build HUGE loads


Thats what I have moved on to.. I use 12ga nichrome wire, and have it run between screws in wood. I put the whole thing into a bucket on my workbench and fill with ice water... plenty of runtime for working with multi-Kw power supplies. And when you're done, or the water gets warm, dump it and add more ice.

Running the wire underwater lets you pump TONS more though it compared to stagnant or forced air cooling.

I buy all my wire from here: http://www.jacobs-online.biz/nichrome_wire.htm

They also have some awesome calculators for figuring out how hot wire gets, how much power it can sink, etc...
 
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