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How to Assemble an Electric Heating Element from Scratch
- cenamus 1y agoSome solution with a maximum power point tracking inverter would probably be a whole lot more efficient. But probably depends a lot on the exact resistances and panels involved. But I guess that would go against the "low tech" spirit. And if panels aren't the limiting factor why not
- amelius 1y agoNo short-circuit protection? [Also, I don't like the quality of the images. How can I take their advice seriously if the images are barely viewable. It looks like someone actually made an effort to reduce the quality of the images. For artistic effect, probably. Don't do that.]
- LooerCell 1y agoAbout the quality of the images, it's on purpose: > By dithering, we can make images ten times less resource-intensive, even though they are displayed much larger than on the old website. This is needed because the website is solar-powered and self-hosted on low-tech hardware, read more here: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/
- gblargg 1y agoI just took the original first image from the article and compressed it to a 37k JPEG, the same size as the dithered image, and it looks a lot better. They must be considering resources to display the image, not just file size and network bandwidth.
- chuho 1y agoImages aren't like that for artistic effect, but for lower energy consumption. > We further apply default typefaces, dithered images, off-line reading options, and other tricks to lower energy use far below that of the average website. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website/
- amelius 1y agoOk, I didn't read that. But I still think it's _not_ a good idea to do that for a topic where personal safety is at stake. And besides, the quality is really too low anyway. I can barely recognize the thermocouples in those images.
- aposm 1y agoHow can I take your comment seriously if you didn't read the article? It looks like someone didn't actually make an effort to understand the context of the images.
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- creer 1y agoAt the bottom of the page: Battery status 63%, not charging Power used 2.69W Uptime 5 weeks, 11 hours, 36 minutes Traffic from HN may be a problem today...
- teeray 1y ago> It looks like someome actually made an effort to reduce the quality of the images. For artistic effect, probably. They did, and it’s part of the footprint-reduction techniques used to host the site off solar full-time. https://github.com/lowtechmag/solar/wiki/Solar-Web-Design#images https://github.com/lowtechmag/solar/wiki/Solar-Web-Design#im...
- amelius 1y agoI don't know, they are making electric heaters. Might as well use your server to generate some of that heat ...
- mysteria 1y agoThat's fine for the main article but I think there should be a way to get higher quality images should the reader request them. If power is a concern those can be hosted elsewhere. I think it's acceptable for the drawings to be compressed this way but the photographs are very unclear.
- AmosLightnin 1y agoThere is. Click the small pixely looking X at the end of the photo's caption.
- mysteria 1y agoI see. They should make it more obvious.
- quickthrowman 1y ago> No short-circuit protection? That’s the first thing I noticed too. You can buy a 277VAC/60VDC 7A DIN rail miniature circuit breaker that can handle 7,500 amps of fault current for $20 [0] there’s no excuse other than ignorance for the lack of overcurrent protection. I only know how to use a calculator to figure out AC fault current but that should be enough to handle a solar panel. It does mention an optional thermal switch and optional thermal fuse, my sauna stove definitely has a thermal switch and I’d include one if I was building this thing too. [0] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/phoenix-contact/1020043/9656153 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/phoenix-contact/1...
- amelius 1y agoSo glad someone responded to the main part of my comment.
- quickthrowman 1y agoI’m an electrical PM so the lack of overcurrent protection jumped out at me, I have to consider overcurrent protection for every single circuit I reason about, it’s mandatory and should be included in this installation. The image part of your comment was nerd bait so everyone replied to that :P
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- throwaway173738 1y agoWhy not use cast or wrought iron and fire bricks for a higher temperature rating? What you’d have then is basically a wood stove except with the wood replaced with electricity.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoElectroBOOM had the idea first and did it better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrnCDKB1hE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrnCDKB1hE0
- killingtime74 1y agoNext article, how to mine your own nickel from scratch? "It's a lot cheaper"
- realty_geek 1y agoTrue story (even though as the years go by I find it hard to comprehend myself) I was in a boarding school in Ghana in the late 80's and pretty much every day there would be someone boiling water with a fork directly wired to a 240 volt socket. All the beds were metal bunk beds and there was plenty of combustible material in each dormitory. I am pretty sure this was replicated in the dozens of other boarding schools across the country. Somehow I never heard of any deaths or serious injuries from it. Not in the slightest bit advocating for it. It was a desperate solution in desperate times but it has massively skewed my comprehension of risk compared to pretty much anyone I meet in Europe.
- mixmastamyk 1y agoNot uncommon in Brazil to have an electric water heater installed on a shower head, sometimes with lightly covered wiring. Was gobsmacked when I first saw them. One even gave me a tingle when touching the faucet and I told the owner. :sweat-smile:
- twodave 1y agoI remember some showers I took in Rio that, to my surprise/dismay, required bringing a match along to light the water heater within the shower. That now seems tame by comparison.
- estimator7292 1y agoMy flat in Czechia had a gas burning tankless water heater in the shower. Standard tub with a shower head and water heater directly on the wall. The floor of the tub was also at least 10" above the bathroom floor. I literally broke a rib trying to get out of the damn thing
- hagbard_c 1y agoThose things were everywhere in the Netherlands when I was a child - 70's. I had one above the sink in the kitchen in my student apartment (half of a pigsty converted to human habitation, pigs in the other half, a thin wall in between - that's what you get when studying at an agricultural university and living on a farm) running off a propane tank in the garden. We had one in the kitchen and a bigger one in the bathroom, running off natural gas which the country had plenty of after the discovery of a large gas deposit in the northern Netherlands. There were no vents to the outside, the things just vented into the room. They're called 'geisers' (geysers) in Dutch.
- RRWagner 1y agoI only half-humorously thought the article would include how to make the wire from ore, or at least a functional equivalent.
- pengaru 1y agoSo many complaints about dithered images when they're effectively thumbnail equivalents, click on the pixelated X for the original, ffs people.
- IAmBroom 1y agoAll in one subthread, which you didn't reply to.
- aurizon 1y agoNichrome increases in resistance with temperature = choose the right wire gage and coil length and you can achieve a steady state at a particular voltage which will mean it will approach a temperature = not burn food, although this design does not look like it will have that problem - unless the insulation allows it?
- goda90 1y agoThis pairs well with their other articles on heating like one about using hot water bottles to heat people instead of rooms. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/01/the-revenge-of-the-hot-water-bottle/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2022/01/the-revenge-of-the...
- avipars 1y agoReminds me of The Toaster Project
- Doohickey-d 1y agoOne thing to be aware of: nichrome wire heats up. Solder melts with heat. So if you solder them together, and your nichrome wire gets hot enough, they will not stay attached. Hence commercial devices use a mechanical, crimp connection. Probably not an issue for oven or cooking temperatures, but it is if you're working on hotter things like heaters or hairdryers and such.
- CamperBob2 1y agoGood luck soldering nichrome in the first place, though, at least without using some kind of crazy acid-core solder. You'll need to crimp it.
- Arrath 1y agoThe article seems to recommend wrapping several coils of nichrome around the wire supplying electricity, and just globbing a load of tin solder on. Not ideal, I'd say.
- Aurornis 1y agoYour standard electronics solder is not going to stick to nichrome anyway. You have to seek out special brazing materials and difficult fluxes to even get that far. This article tries to use large solder blobs to mechanically trap the nichrome wire, which I don't recommend for the reasons above. You really should use a crimp connection.
- exitnode 1y agoHere's a similar approach for converting a trackball or mouse into a heated input device: https://rz01.org/heated-trackball/ https://rz01.org/heated-trackball/
- userbinator 1y agoHeat-resistant electric cable. These electric wires are encapuslated in silicone mesh rather than plastic. Silicone is not commonly used for this purpose. More common these days is fiberglass, and long ago it was asbestos.
- moron4hire 1y agoIt's a filter checkbox on McMaster-Carr when searching for High Temperature Cable. It also is the largest sub group in that category.
- louwrentius 1y agoLowtechmagazine is building a solar powered electric oven [0]. This is why they want to build an electric heating element that works on a relatively low voltage. [0]: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/10/how-to-build-a-solar-powered-electric-oven/ https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/10/how-to-build-a-sol...
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- asdefghyk 1y agoI've always been curious how modern electric heating elements are assembled in a safe manner. I mean ones that use nichrome heating wire , inside a metal tube. The metal tube is packed with insulating material. Like how is the heating wire maintained in a position so it touches the smallish diameter metal pipe. From Google - about how manufactured ....An electric heating element inside a metal pipe is a common design for tubular heaters, which consists of a resistance wire (often Nichrome) coiled in the center of a metal tube. The space between the wire and the tube is packed with an electrical insulator, such as magnesium oxide powder, which conducts heat efficiently while preventing the wire from shorting against the pipe. This design allows for durable, efficient heating as the heat is conducted from the element to the pipe's outer surface....
- quickthrowman 1y ago> I've always been curious how modern electric heating elements are assembled in a safe manner. I mean ones that use nichrome heating wire , inside a metal tube. The metal tube is packed with insulating material. Like how is the heating wire maintained in a position so it touches the smallish diameter metal pipe. Probably in a very similar way to mineral insulated cables, if not the exact same process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral-insulated_copper-clad_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral-insulated_copper-clad_...
- Arubis 1y agoAnything’s an electric heating element if you can jam enough current through it.