My DIY Smoke Machine

For those interested, here is an outside photo of mine:



Looking at the top of the 2-1/2 gallon spackle bucket, you can see:

• Oxygen tubing for air in
• Larger clear plastic tubing for smoke out (with funnel for stuffing in larger holes, such as gasoline filler)
• 12VDC in for heat

Inside, I used some nichrome wire I had a spool of, the spool gave its resistance per inch, I calculated a value to give me about a 20A draw, which is conservative for my 10ga feed wires, cut the proper length of nichrome wire, then wrapped it around a piece of tubing to make a coil, and connected the ends to the brass screws in the lid.

I used some fiberglass mat to line the bottom of the bucket, and stuffed some of it through the center of the coil of nichrome wire.

I laid the wire in the bottom of the bucket, then saturated the fiberglass with a couple of cups of baby oil (might as well keep my fuel system smelling baby-fresh!), and snapped on the lid.

The two lengths of tubing are connected to brass barbs attached through the cover with nuts.

I attach the input oxygen tubing to an old nebulizer (asthma) compressor that probably everyone (or a relative) has lying around somewhere, attach the clamps to a 12V battery, and, within a minute or two, there is smoke pouring out of the reversed funnel under just a little bit of pressure.

It's not a $2,000 Snap-On smoke generator, but I have managed to find leaks with it.

– Eric