So this is the start of False Profit Labs… seems like it is off to a good one. I didn’t really know what to expect when heading over to Brett’s. I figured we were going to brainstorm some about the candelabra and the bubbles and FPL in general but I didn’t know how much work we might be doing or how directed that would be. Should I bring my own stuff to work on? I decided not too mainly because I was on my bike and was still slightly hung over and didn’t feel like dealing with figuring out a project of my own right then and just figured I would help with other people’s projects. This turned out well because most of the work right now seems to be focused on the bubbles and candelabra.I arrived as some brainstorming was going on and there was good talk of direction and different plans to frame the projects. After this we headed down to the Lab. And also immediately starting lighting things on fire. W00t! We got a demo the candelabra controller which was really fun to see working. Even if the input system seemed to have bugs. Brendan and I then started work on an ignition system based on hot wire. Put enough current through special types of wire and it gets really hot. Not too surprising but will it be hot enough to light propane? How much current do you need? How little current can you get away with? How should you shape the wire? Is it a good idea to wrap wire that you intend to get very very hot around a wood rod? While only one of these questions has an obvious answer (wood rod = no) that was the first thing we did. It worked ok. We hooked the wire wrapped wood up to 120v from a generator and waited eagerly for something to happen. The wire got warm, the wood started to smell a little funny and we had effectively made a small space heater. This clearly would not do. So we reducing the resistance of the wire by hooking up about half the length of the wire (to half the resistance) and tried again. This time the wire got red hot and the wood quickly burst into flame. Success!Now that the basic concept had been proved, we needed to refine a lot. The first place to look was a hydrogen powered toy rocket which had a wire ignition. First step, test the rocket. Instructions read, rocket fueled and ready, now time to launch. But outside there are power lines and too many houses and very little open space. So what other place to launch than inside the garage. At this point I wish I could report some exciting disaster or at least a near miss but sadly everything was quite uneventful. This is mainly due to the fact that electrolysis part of the hydrogen power rocket seemed to have been broken and the rocket would not launch. So we trying hooking up the ignition wire directly to a 12v battery and the promptly melted it. Not quite success.Eventually after much more poking we managed to light propane and hydrogen off coiled wire. We even managed to get hydrogen (not propane sadly) to light of wire powered by a battery, not 120v which means we can reduce the power considerably when making the igniters. In the mean time, other folks had been playing around with the top pipes on the candelabra and trying to figure out how to change the air mix to change the flame.Overall, we had a very good time and good progress seemed to be made and then we went and had tacos.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Workshop.