dkroc67

I just built the foam cutter power supply mentioned on the NSRCA website by Tom Weedon. I plugged it in and it immediately blew a fuse in the long bow setting. I turned it on again on the short setting and I can't get any power from the outputs but the 10 ohm 10 watt resistors sure got hot. I used the Mouser Electronics NTE 56008 triac in the bill of materials, and a 470 ohm 1 watt resistor. If anyone could lend a suggestion it would help out a lot as I am all out of ideas.

SST

My Feedback: (2)

I have a Wing MFG bow and I run it on my trusty Sears 10/50 amp battery charger. On 10 amps, of course. The wire won't even draw all of that...

Ed Smith

I built my first foam cutter over twenty years ago. I used the nichrome wire that RC modeller mag sold at the time and an ordinary 10amp battery charger, similar to the previous post. The system is still in use and has never let me down.

This is not a criticism of modern systems, I have those as well.

Ed S

fprintf

I did the same thing - blew a fuse right away. I ended up putting a ordinary household dimmer spliced into the power cord. I bypassed the rheostat and only use the long bow setting. I started up really slowly and found that the power needs to be about 1/4 of the way up to heat the long bow to warm, and 1/3 of the way up to get it really hot! Perhaps you too have burned out the rheostat...