Hotwire Cutter Power Source/Supply

General Discussion
61

I did a Swaylocks search for "hot wire"....Lots of good stuff...including this thread...

http://www2.swaylocks.com/forums/cannot-get-working-hot-wire-anyone-north-san-diego-have-one-sale

 

Here's a thread from 2006........we have quite a few things dialed in now......like the Variac and quality wire....

http://www2.swaylocks.com/node/1019259

Over 40...riding a skateboard......not me......:)

Have fun......

Ray

62

I said the same to Ken at SegWay.  He seemed to think with the right glass/carbon re-inforcement an EPS core would work.  He’s the one who inspired me to try the lighter 3-lb EPS.  However, I will be using more than that.  I plan to have solid wood or epoxy based mounting holes for the trucks/hardware.

Yeah, I’ll have to see about the short-circuit switch trip out.  If it has a thermal trip, our resident electrical tinkerer at work thought it might last for 30 min without tripping the thermal circuit if I don’t push it too hard.  However, it is manual and not an automatic charger.

63

@ Stingray

Actually I’m 58.  And that ain’t no skateboard.  That is surf-style cutbacks/carving on a cushion of air – 4 ply pneumatic street slicks.  Closest thing you’ll find to surfing shoreside, as long as you have the right paved slope and a little plastic body armor.

I have some Nichrome right now to play with.  Looks like 20 or 22 gauge.  The clips I bought (10-amp) at Radio Shack look like those in your picture.  But I plan to return them because I found some nice 10-amp copper alligator clips on-line.

Safety absolutely, that’s what the alligator clips and different wire lengths/gauges are about.  Start with 12-volt/2-amp and heaviest guage wire with greatest length, moving to shorter length with clip placement.  Then move to 6-volt/6amp for the same wire.  Then move to 12-volt/6-amp, same wire again.  And so on… with each wire gauge until I get the right combination of wire length/guage, volts and amps.

Thanks for the links.  I’ll have a read.

 

64

Awesome you can do it with a battery charger. How resourceful!

Good Luck in your Project I hope you discover what your looking for.

 

Kind regards,

Surfding

 

 

 

 

65

Damned double posts.  Gotta pick up the server speed/bandwidth at swaylocks fellas.

66

You’ll have to forgive Mr. Surfding.

He’s feeling persecuted on the XPS thread.  He must be taking it out on Mr. BgSurfer here .

67

Stoneburner: Your pretty funny!

Do you really think I take this stuff that serious?

We are just having a good old time tinkering instead of being bored watching TV commercials.

To be honest I love the stoke of Mr. BgSurfer and find him to have a preserving quality that I admire.

If he was closer I would send him one of my two variaces. However with the advice of MD I bet he will make it work with a battery charger.

I’ve used one in the past with success however I don’t have any patience to work that slow. Remember he’s making  something other than a surfboard.

It’s all good and if you knew me it takes a lot more to get me rattled!

 

Kind regards,

 

Surfding

 

 

68

Warm and fuzzy …

If you could be a color, which one would you be?

69

http://www.surfline.com/video/webisodes/dsc-shaun-ward_20592

Warm and fuzzy …

If you could be a color, which one would you be?

 

Oh yah I would be Blue Bro!****

 
Let’s work out and go for a surf.

70

http://www.surfline.com/video/webisodes/dsc-shaun-ward_20592

Warm and fuzzy …

If you could be a color, which one would you be?

 

Oh yah I would be Blue Bro!****

 
Let’s work out and go for a surf.

71

You jump rope?

Brah … gotta teach me.

72

That’s my son Shaun he trains really hard. He can jump rope for 45 minutes without breathing hard. When I train with him it makes me 10 years younger. His diet is real strict as well. DSC training is the key to keeping fit for surfing if you like to surf?

73

 

I swim 0.5 mile x 3 weekly, arms only, crawl/free-style.

Martial arts 2-3x/week.

Bars (dips, pull-ups, chin-ups) 2x/week.

Sit-ups, push-ups, squat-thrusts 2x/week.

Climb that 17% grade and rip down it 2 days/week

Started all of this so I might be able to surf for a week or two each year.

The pay-off is I can tear it up on my street-rig at 58.  Plan to keep doing it for at least another decade, if I don't cripple myself -- my shoulders take most of the abuse from hand plants.  So far, so good...

 
74

I hear ya - I’m 49 and I’m just loving my Carveboard !

When people express interest in it I always say ‘it feels just like surfing - until you fall off .’

I have bashed myself up a little on it , I must confess.But it’s great for practicing surf moves, for sure

My son and some of the other local young cats are getting into longboard skating too so we all skate together, heaps of fun.

Bgsurfer do you post a bit on Silverfish ?I think I’ve seen those pics of yours on a thread there about the carveboard ( the long one with the link to that Joana Prado vid)

Speaking of threads here’s one with Swaybro Blane  

cutting it up on dry land 

75

Yep.  I’ve been at SF for several years now.  Mostly I lurk in the builder’s sub-forum now.  I’ve been lurking here at swaylocks for 3 or 4 years.

SilverFish is where I saw a carveboard, which led to watching a vid, which inspired me to put together my own custom surf-style carvers using mountainboard equipment.  I like the steeper tip angles of mountainboard decks (35 degrees).  They give a snappier, short surfboard type of responsiveness to the ride.  And longer axles (18") give solid tracking for hard leans and tight 180 cutbacks/re-entries.

Riding pneumatic, surf-style street rigs is guaranteed to improve your surfing.  No telling what I could have been doing on a surfboard in my late twenties if I could have been riding one of my current street rigs on some nice hills.  They really allow you to focus on balance and weight shifting – incredible, 24-7-365.  There aren’t enough consistent good waves on the planet to get that kind of riding time in.

I think the pictures you are talking about are in this thread:

http://www.silverfishlongboarding.com/forum/longboard-hybrids/124841-carveboard-ditches.html

I posted the comparison photos to surf leans and cutbacks here:

I've gotten to the point now where commercial equipment won't perform the way I want it to -- basically Chinese pop-outs.  So now I'm planning on making my own custom decks.  Enter custom shaping...
I have been planning to build a few surfboards also.
 
76

Hip replacement surgurey is going to cost a few dollars......Sooner or later you are going to fall.....

my knees are trashed....mostly from years of skateboarding and blue collar work....call it what you want........

......it's a skateboard with big wheels....it hurts when you fall....no matter how much you exercise before hand ,it still hurts when you fall.......

I've been working with an adult that had to re-learn how to walk....not easy...not fun....

Count your blessings

 

Stingray

77

Sorry to hear about your knees.

If you ever ride one of these surf-style street carvers, you will understand why I say they are not skateboards.
(BTW I like your thread about making EPS blanks -- thanks for posting the link.)

I count my blessings every time I see somebody who is confined to a wheelchair.  I appreciate your concerns.
 
IMO motorcycles are suicide machines.

Nonetheless, surfing is not without risks either.  Paralysis, hypothermia and drowning are all very real hazards.  I've never been held under by several tons of seawater while riding my street rigs.

Know your limits.  I have fallen many times.  When in doubt, don't go out... 
It's all about risk management.
 
78

Hello BgSurfer ,

I'm stoked with where you're going....my body just can't handle it anymore.....I'm sticking with small waves for now,,,

The Crew down here in San Diego have the RR thing dialed in.....We have a few tricks...Most have been posted...

I'd love to see a build thread with your boards. Did you check out the WMD thread and the Timberflex thread?

 

Stingray

 

79

RR = Resin Research?

Did some searching last weekend on WMD and a little today about Timberflex.  Are these the threads you’re talking about:

http://www2.swaylocks.com/node/1029134

http://www2.swaylocks.com/node/1029250

Thought about a thin baltic birch ply (1/32 to 1/16) over foam with rail stringers, then glassed.  I think I may have come up with a different foam technique for these street decks.  Lots of designs/materials to test though.

I plan to start out with solid plywood decks with glass/carbon skins to test my deck shape.  Once I get that dialed in, I will move on to foam composites to cut down weight.

A dirtboard forum friend in Ohio made a set of removable aluminum tips that I designed (did it for me at cost)  They will allow me to swap out different deck shape and material prototypes easily – get my techniques perfected before moving on to single-body foam composite decks.

They’re a little rough but they should work well enough for testing.  The piece of wood is to help with visualizing the concept:

80

This looks like a pretty handy calculator for determining gauge, length, volts, amps and temperature for any given cutter that uses Nichrome wire.  All I need is a value for wire temperature now.

http://www.jacobs-online.biz/nichrome/NichromeCalc.html

In one of the earlier threads here at swaylocks, I think somebody tossed out a value of 300 degrees F for a cutter wire – seems a little low.  But what do I know.

Can somebody tell me what temperature is needed to vaporize/melt polystyrene?

Thanks.