**Designing a Mini Fog Machine: A Journey of Trial and Error**

As I embarked on the project of creating a mini fog machine, I was determined to avoid certain pitfalls that would compromise the performance and safety of the device. With nichrome wire identified as suitable for evaporating fog juice, my next step was to determine how to bring them into contact.

**Initial Ideas and Experimentation**

My first idea was to submerge the nichrome wire in fog juice, but this approach proved ineffective due to the wire's thermal energy quickly dissipating into the surrounding liquid. The resulting effect was akin to a kettle, rather than the desired vaporization.

Undeterred, I experimented with creating a spring-like shape and using a motor to pour fog juice over it. However, the juice slipped off the heated wire, rendering this approach unfruitful.

**The Eureka Moment: Using a Propane Lamp Wick**

It was during these trials that I realized the need for a material that could hold the fog juice while also allowing the nichrome wire to reach the required evaporating temperature. The solution lay in using a propane lamp wick, which I cut and wrapped with the nichrome wire.

**Refining the Design**

While this initial setup showed promise, it created burn marks on the wick due to high temperatures. Further experimentation led me to refine the design by using five to six turns of 0.2 millimeter wire around one or two weeks while positioning the wire close to the surface of the liquid.

**3D Printing and Assembly**

With this proof-of-concept in mind, I created a blueprint and 3D models for my mini fog machine. After printing these with orange Prusa PE TG filaments, it was time to mount all the necessary components.

The top piece featured an 80 millimeter fan, which I secured using mounting holes drilled into the 3D print. Its job was to create a breeze that would push out the smoke through the smaller front-facing escape hole.

**The Electronics: A Simple Schematic**

The electronics consisted of two potentiometers to set the fan speed and heater temperature according to the changing duty cycle of the PWM signals. I created a simple schematic using a Arduino Nano on a piece of perfboard.

**Connecting the Water Level Sensor and Fan**

As soon as this was finished, I uploaded a very easy-to-understand piece of code onto it and mounted the circuit to the side of the bottom piece. I connected the water level sensor and fan, which would activate the heater when the liquid level was too low.

**Building the Heater**

I built the heater according to my previous description and hot-glued it into its own little 3D printed indentation. I used M5 bolts to mechanically connect the nichrome wire to copper wire while giving the whole construction some support.

**Final Assembly and Testing**

It was finally time to hook everything up, pour in the juice, close everything up, and power the system. As you can see, my idea of a crude minimalistic fog machine did work. However, due to high temperatures, there's a possibility of creating toxic fumes. I highly recommend not building this version of the machine and instead opting for a cheap commercial one.

**Conclusion**

I hope that my electronics creation has put you in a spooky mood. If so, don't forget to Like, share, subscribe, and hit the notification bell. Stay creative, and I'll see you next time!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensince Halloween is slowly approaching I've been thinking about what kind of Halloween related electronics project I should build after spending the last two Halloween episodes perfecting an ultrasonic mist maker and then out of the blue I realized that ultrasonic mist makers are not the only way to create mists or fog or smoke or however you want to call it there also exists commercial fog machines that use so calls and I'm not joking here juice in order to create smoke but what does it take to turn such juice into proper smoke how does it work and can we even build a simple smoke machine on our own let's find out this video is sponsored by jlc PCB where you can get very good quality PCBs for as low as $2 so upload rogova files today and get your own PCBs due to the fast delivery time within a week first off let's find out what exactly this juice is after a bit of high professional research it seems like juice is a mixture of glycol and distilled water this mixture comes with an evaporating temperature of around 200 degrees Celsius at which point it becomes the desired smoke most importantly though it is only toxic if you swallow it directly but aside from that it is not listed as a hazardous product so with the basics of fog juice out of the way I sucked a bit of it up with a pipette in order to drip it on to my 350 degree Celsius hot soldering iron to create smoke needless to say while this method shows us that the juice works as expected it is certainly not a smoke machine the magic component which could do that is such a fog machine pump it not only sucks up the fog juice but also presses it into a heated up chamber where the fluid turns into vapour now I didn't feel like ordering such a pump though because not only would it have taken forever to ship and mains voltage can be quite dangerous but also because I've had these packages with nichrome wire laying around that I wanted to use for quite a while SD named wood suggests it is an alloy of nickel and chromium which not only comes with a high mechanical strength but also with a melting point of around 1,400 degrees Celsius which means it could easily withstand the evaporating temperature of pop juice to achieve such a temperature we can utilize the rather high resistance of the wire as an example I will be using this 0.2 millimeter thick nichrome wire of which a 10 centimeter long piece features a resistance of around 3.6 ohm that means by applying for example if I pull to the wire piece we should get a current flow of 1.39 amps and thus a heating power of six point nine five watts so I tried just that which worked as expected and rose the temperature of the wire above 200 degree Celsius which was enough to vaporize the juice awesome and by increasing the voltage even more the wires started to blow and eventually broke apart at a hotspots which we definitely want to avoid for our fog machine so now that we know that nichrome wire is suitable to evaporate fog juice how should we bring them in contacts to answer that question I firstly freely printed a small container which I filled up with fog juice of course an idea like submerging the nichrome wire does not work since even though the wire is bright orange before submerging it gives off its thermal energy to the surrounding liquid rather quickly it basically acts more like a kettle at this point my first real idea was to create a spring-like shape and then letting a motor pour fog juice over it in order to vaporize it and as you can see creating the spring shape was no problem at all but after trying to pour fog juice over the heated up wire I noticed that it slipped off its instead of vaporizing which means that this idea was not good enough it got me thinking though that I would need a material which not only holds the fog juice but is also capable of having the hots nichrome wire wrapped around it so that it can reach the evaporating temperature the magic component I'm talking about is of course a propane lamp wick for first tests I cut off a small piece wrapped wire around its upper section and submerged its into fog juice before standing it up straight and powering the wire and as you can see it does kind of work I said kind of because the high temperature also created burn marks which we definitely want to avoid that is why I experimented a bit longer with all my given materials to finally come to design which creates the smoke more or less reliably and without burn marks the solution is to use five to six turns of 0.2 millimeter wire around one or two weeks while the wire should only be positioned close to the surface of the liquids and with this proof of concept of mind I started creating not only a blueprint on paper but also to 3d models for my mini fog machine after 3d printing them with orange Prusa meant PE TG filaments it was time to mount all the necessary components to them so I started with the big hole in the top piece of the machine which is for an 80 millimeter fan whose mounting holes I had to drill before I was able to secure it to the 3d print its job is to create a breeze which pushes out the smoke through the smaller front facing escape hole for the bottom piece I firstly had to mount this bottle ever sensor on the inside which creates a variable voltage depending on how much liquids is still left in the container if the Fockers level is too low the Arduino aka the heart of the system will notice that NT activate the heater the heater by the way as well as the fan is power controlled by two MOSFETs which on the other hand are controlled by the Arduino who puts with modulation and of course as an inputs I use two potentiometers to set the fan speed and heater temperature according to the changing duty cycle of the PWM signals so according to this simple schematic I created the smoke control circuit around naught we know Nano onto a piece of perfboard and as soon as that was finished I uploaded a very easy to understand piece of code onto it after then mounting the circuit to the side of the bottom piece and connecting the water level sensor as well as the fan it was time to build the heater I built it's just like I described it earlier and then continued by hot glueing it into its own little 3d printed indentation after than screwing in to m5 bolts next to its which I used to mechanically connect the nichrome wire to copper wire as well as giving the whole construction a bit of support it was finally time to hook the EDA up to the electronics pouring the juice in closing everything up and powering the system and as you can see my idea of a crude minimalistic fog machine did work but since we are dealing with high temperatures here and I read online that there's a possibility to somehow create toxic fumes I highly recommend that you do not build my version of this machine and instead go for cheap commercial one but nevertheless I hope that you got into a spooky mood through my electronics creation if so don't forget to Like share subscribe and hitting the notification bell stay creative and I will see you next timesince Halloween is slowly approaching I've been thinking about what kind of Halloween related electronics project I should build after spending the last two Halloween episodes perfecting an ultrasonic mist maker and then out of the blue I realized that ultrasonic mist makers are not the only way to create mists or fog or smoke or however you want to call it there also exists commercial fog machines that use so calls and I'm not joking here juice in order to create smoke but what does it take to turn such juice into proper smoke how does it work and can we even build a simple smoke machine on our own let's find out this video is sponsored by jlc PCB where you can get very good quality PCBs for as low as $2 so upload rogova files today and get your own PCBs due to the fast delivery time within a week first off let's find out what exactly this juice is after a bit of high professional research it seems like juice is a mixture of glycol and distilled water this mixture comes with an evaporating temperature of around 200 degrees Celsius at which point it becomes the desired smoke most importantly though it is only toxic if you swallow it directly but aside from that it is not listed as a hazardous product so with the basics of fog juice out of the way I sucked a bit of it up with a pipette in order to drip it on to my 350 degree Celsius hot soldering iron to create smoke needless to say while this method shows us that the juice works as expected it is certainly not a smoke machine the magic component which could do that is such a fog machine pump it not only sucks up the fog juice but also presses it into a heated up chamber where the fluid turns into vapour now I didn't feel like ordering such a pump though because not only would it have taken forever to ship and mains voltage can be quite dangerous but also because I've had these packages with nichrome wire laying around that I wanted to use for quite a while SD named wood suggests it is an alloy of nickel and chromium which not only comes with a high mechanical strength but also with a melting point of around 1,400 degrees Celsius which means it could easily withstand the evaporating temperature of pop juice to achieve such a temperature we can utilize the rather high resistance of the wire as an example I will be using this 0.2 millimeter thick nichrome wire of which a 10 centimeter long piece features a resistance of around 3.6 ohm that means by applying for example if I pull to the wire piece we should get a current flow of 1.39 amps and thus a heating power of six point nine five watts so I tried just that which worked as expected and rose the temperature of the wire above 200 degree Celsius which was enough to vaporize the juice awesome and by increasing the voltage even more the wires started to blow and eventually broke apart at a hotspots which we definitely want to avoid for our fog machine so now that we know that nichrome wire is suitable to evaporate fog juice how should we bring them in contacts to answer that question I firstly freely printed a small container which I filled up with fog juice of course an idea like submerging the nichrome wire does not work since even though the wire is bright orange before submerging it gives off its thermal energy to the surrounding liquid rather quickly it basically acts more like a kettle at this point my first real idea was to create a spring-like shape and then letting a motor pour fog juice over it in order to vaporize it and as you can see creating the spring shape was no problem at all but after trying to pour fog juice over the heated up wire I noticed that it slipped off its instead of vaporizing which means that this idea was not good enough it got me thinking though that I would need a material which not only holds the fog juice but is also capable of having the hots nichrome wire wrapped around it so that it can reach the evaporating temperature the magic component I'm talking about is of course a propane lamp wick for first tests I cut off a small piece wrapped wire around its upper section and submerged its into fog juice before standing it up straight and powering the wire and as you can see it does kind of work I said kind of because the high temperature also created burn marks which we definitely want to avoid that is why I experimented a bit longer with all my given materials to finally come to design which creates the smoke more or less reliably and without burn marks the solution is to use five to six turns of 0.2 millimeter wire around one or two weeks while the wire should only be positioned close to the surface of the liquids and with this proof of concept of mind I started creating not only a blueprint on paper but also to 3d models for my mini fog machine after 3d printing them with orange Prusa meant PE TG filaments it was time to mount all the necessary components to them so I started with the big hole in the top piece of the machine which is for an 80 millimeter fan whose mounting holes I had to drill before I was able to secure it to the 3d print its job is to create a breeze which pushes out the smoke through the smaller front facing escape hole for the bottom piece I firstly had to mount this bottle ever sensor on the inside which creates a variable voltage depending on how much liquids is still left in the container if the Fockers level is too low the Arduino aka the heart of the system will notice that NT activate the heater the heater by the way as well as the fan is power controlled by two MOSFETs which on the other hand are controlled by the Arduino who puts with modulation and of course as an inputs I use two potentiometers to set the fan speed and heater temperature according to the changing duty cycle of the PWM signals so according to this simple schematic I created the smoke control circuit around naught we know Nano onto a piece of perfboard and as soon as that was finished I uploaded a very easy to understand piece of code onto it after then mounting the circuit to the side of the bottom piece and connecting the water level sensor as well as the fan it was time to build the heater I built it's just like I described it earlier and then continued by hot glueing it into its own little 3d printed indentation after than screwing in to m5 bolts next to its which I used to mechanically connect the nichrome wire to copper wire as well as giving the whole construction a bit of support it was finally time to hook the EDA up to the electronics pouring the juice in closing everything up and powering the system and as you can see my idea of a crude minimalistic fog machine did work but since we are dealing with high temperatures here and I read online that there's a possibility to somehow create toxic fumes I highly recommend that you do not build my version of this machine and instead go for cheap commercial one but nevertheless I hope that you got into a spooky mood through my electronics creation if so don't forget to Like share subscribe and hitting the notification bell stay creative and I will see you next time