Subject: Re: Resistance heaters

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 13:24:31 -0400

To All,
The most common resistance heated appliance in our lives is the incandescent
lamp, followed by toasters, electric cold water heaters, base board heaters,
etc. The principles are fairly basic.
To resistanrt heat work for the forge you need contactors and a large power
supply, like a heavy duty welder. This may not be something that you want to
try at home. I saw this once on an industrial basis and it was not pretty. We
had to anneal and heat treat a steel casting larger than any furnace on site.
We literally built a box of insulating bricks around it and hooked up about
20 mig welding power supples to it. The migs used .125" wire. We got it hot
enough to normalize and anneal it.
The point is that it takes a lot of power. It will make your local electric
supplier very happy.

Ho