Mine works fine without a variac. I grabbed both leads of the charger and didn’t feel a thing…
I use a car battery charger. On the 6v setting. I don’t like using the car battery since I just about blew my head off with one. The battery was emitting gases for whatever reason and when I attached the terminal it sparked and ignited the battery gases. it EXPLODED. Knocked me flat on my back and sent battery pieces and acid everywhere. It was quite exciting.
I didn’t quite have control of the situation like JM does in his picture.
Hi Glenn,
Sorry, I was in Hawaii and couldn’t get a pic of my hotwire cutter. Anyways, here’s my hotwire cutter.
Its made from 1x2 finish grade white wood ~$2.00 I had them cut it to 2 ft lengths.
I bought some picture frame brackets ~1.00, Springs ~2.00, Screws ~1.00, washers/butterfly nut/ bolt ~2.00, Extension cord (on sale) ~2.00. So About 10 bucks. The extension cord is attatched using aligator clips I had lying around but that should cost you about another 2 bucks if you want to buy it. One end of the hotwire is fixed as some have said that it makes it easier to control. I haven’t put wires on it yet as I haven’t decided which one is best…guitar strings? or nichrome wire? hmm…i think acp has some wires made for hotwiring…i might spring for that. So I haven’t been able to test it out…but it should work.
I just bought all the parts and assembled it at home pretty easy and cheap.
Rio
We use 3/4" emt conduit with a 90 degree bend on each end at 32"". We drill a hole big enough to fit 5/16 fiberglass all thread thru the hole, throw in a cheap spring, a washer and a nut on each side for wire stretch. We drill a hole at the end of the all thread, insert a ring, crimp it closed then attach the wire to the ring. We used to alligator clip them, we use a crimp now. Cheap, fast and easy way to get two bows. For a power supply we use a 480 primary, 120 secondary single phase hvac controls transformer. Its a big sucker that kicks out around 34 volts when 120 volts is fed into it, don’t know why 34 doesn’t really calculate right, then adjust it from there with an old 7 amp powerstat. We blow fans on each side of the block to keep the wire a little cooler, seems to save a little bit of wire. We usually use 26 or 24 gauge nichrome, haven’t got the knack of the stainless mig wire yet.
Hope it helps.