Kanthal Mesh?!?

[StereoDreamer]

I saw this on Ebay, an wondered if anyone had tried to use this material for "coils" instead of wire. Looks like you could make some VERY interesting heating elements with this stuff...

Amazon.com: kanthal: Industrial & Scientific

 

[anavidfan]

I was thinking about that the other day, why not Kanthal mesh? I used the link above and could not find the Kanthal mesh.

 

[nnote]

I think OP is confused. Kanthal is one thing rebuilders use for 'wire' and 'coil', one and the same.
Stainless Steel mesh is what rebuilders use for a 'wick' or "SS mesh"

 

[xplumberx]

they do make a mesh made of kanthal instead of SS..

 

[tc1]

Not sure how well the kanthal would hold up. That would be my concern.

"Dangit! I popped my wick again"

 

[nnote]

Considering 'mesh' is interwoven material, there would be no place for a direct positive to negative, just a path to least resistance. I don't see this working. There would be one hot from one contact to the other. I suppose that could work though.

 

[Sinister Dexter]

Considering 'mesh' is interwoven material, there would be no place for a direct positive to negative, just a path to least resistance. I don't see this working. There would be one hot from one contact to the other.

The electric current would use the entire mesh. Using the full width of the wick results in less resistance than using only a portion of the wick. Metal is highly conductive so when you apply voltages to metal, every point in the metal has a voltage.

This might work with plain old SS mesh but I suspect the resistance would be too low. Kanthal mesh sounds like a great idea.

 

[StereoDreamer]

No, actually, I'm not talking about using it for wicking material--it is obviously too loosely woven for that.

I was wondering if it might be useable for a "coil" , but in a radically different configuration other than wrapping it around in a spiral loop...

 

[upsetter21]

Not trying to talk 420 here, just chiming in on something maybe relevant to this discussion... The Magic Flights Lunch Box Vaporizer... Seems to use a resistive mesh as its heating element. My buddy took his apart & we're convinced the element is Nichrome Mesh. The Positive and negative connections are achieved by rolling the mesh over two pieces of wire that are charged by the opposing poles of the battery. So this exists.

 

[st0nedpenguin]

Everybody who tried using mesh as a coil seemed to abandon it pretty quick for whatever reason.