Blowing smoke.

[S5 modeller]

Hi. 

I want to attempt to incorporate some billowing smoke, or steam, in a project I have floating around in my head.

Has anybody attempted anything like this before?

I was thinking of either a smoke generator, used in model trains, or a water atomiser.  To help with moving the smoke/vapour around, was thinking of a pc fan.

Has anyone got any idea if this is feasible? 

Was going to try and find a way of slowing the pc fan down, so it doesn't just blow the smoke away too fast. Is this even possible? 

 

If anyone has any thoughts, comments or inputs I'd love to hear them.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Matt

[Schwarz-Brot]

There's different kinds of PC fans, the most basic type is with only two leads, no pulse output. I am referring to these, as they are the easiest to work with. They are all voltage controlled and usually run at 12V DC. They can be slowed down by applying a smaller voltage. Main problem then becomes they sometimes do not start reliably any more. So maybe start with about 12V and then lower the voltage.

They will still run pretty fast, and the very small ones are super noisy.

 

That's all there is to it. You may run them from a battery (or several in series connection, to up the voltage).

[Gorby]

It may be a silly idea, but... Perhaps one of those small hand-held electric fans might work. If it is too vigorous at blowing the smoke away, you could cut the fan blades down progressively until the desired effect is achieved. They are very cheap, so you wouldn't have lost much if it doesn't work.

[S5 modeller]

Thank you for the replies gents.

Looks like I need to do a bit of experimenting. 

 

Matt

[LotusArenco]

I’ve got one of those 1/16 Heng Long RC tanks knocking around, with the fancy smoke and sound and whatnot.

IIRC the smoke generator for it is a bit like an E-cigarette. Heated coil/wick/glycerine based liquid of some sort.

To blow the smoke out it uses a small motor connected to a reciprocating syringe type piston/valve system that chugs back and forth. It’s a noisy begger, and not too efficient.

I’ve thought about using some small PC fans myself to run it, giving a constant smoke rather than a puff puff type thing. I picked up a tiny little 20x20mm one, but never got round to fixing it up.

If the fan was too fast, I was thinking of just chopping a wee bit off the fan blades to regulate the amount of smoke.

 

Mart

[louiex2]

Blowing smoke is something we model railroaders like to do... Here's a two-part tutorial on using a e-cigarette generator.  http://trainelectronics.com/Animation_Smoke/

 

Lou

[LotusArenco]

2 hours ago, louiex2 said:

Here's a two-part tutorial on using a e-cigarette generator.  http://trainelectronics.com/Animation_Smoke/

Wonderful link! Nice one mate.

 

Mart

[S5 modeller]

Thanks for that Lou, will look into it some more.

 

Matt

[louiex2]

Thanks.  I've found in the modeling world, it helps to learn more than one "dialect" and we all learn a lot from each other no matter what area of scale modeling we choose focus on.

Edited May 23, 2017 by louiex2