Best inexpensive or homebrew smoke/fog machine for laser show

[fixorater]

Any ideas? I've seen a few inexpensive fog machines listed online. The problem is I live in Hawaii and shipping on these things is rediculous.

I'll probably have to buy one locally but..

Has anyone made a homebrew one? As far as I can understand they are pretty simple inside. Just have a pump, heating element, and a fan.

 

[Brlux]

Not exactly a smoke fog machine but I find that when I leave my Ultrasonic Cool Mist humidifier on for a while you can really see the beem of my green and even to some extent red laser quite well.

 

[fixorater]

Hrm... I'll look into that. Thanks.

 

[dr_lava]

You can make a fog machine out of a fan, box, tubing, and an iron:
http://softlyspokenmagicspells.com/halloween/fog.html
you can also make your own fog juice!
After haloween wal-mart had their machines discounted to $12-20.


Another thing that works well is plain ol' incense sticks.

 

[fixorater]

I dig the incense sticks idea... very analog.

 

[pseudonomen137]

From what I understand, the biggest complication with homebrew foggers is the liquid. Perhaps you can make the machine yourself, but as I understand it, its not a very good idea to try using your own homebrew fog juice, so maybe if you could at least find that locally...

What's the problem with the shipping though? USPS priority can go from US mainland to Hawaii for a reasonable fee($5-20), and you should be able to pick up a cheap fogger off the web in the $20-50 range.

 

[fixorater]

Anywhere that I've seen that offers cheap foggers does not offer USPS priority to Hawaii. Many of them for some silly reason only offer UPS or Fedex which ends up being 30-50 bucks shipping.

I love USPS out here- its a godsend for those of us in the islands.

 

[Kenom]

if your lookin to make a ton of smoke and don't care about your health you can mix bleach and brake fluid. Man do you get a ton of smoke from the smallest amounts.

 

[instinct]

if your lookin to make a ton of smoke and don't care about your health you can mix bleach and brake fluid. Man do you get a ton of smoke from the smallest amounts.

:laughing:.. I'm going to try that in my car right now!

 

[Kenom]

I'm not kidding about the amount of smoke so if you do try this make sure you are in a place that is pretty open or has the option for well ventilation. Ie a fan that can be turned on to blow out the smoke. Cause it just seems to keep coming with no end in sight. that and I have no doubt that it is toxic and not good for your health or lungs.

 

[Corona]

Back in the day, I played bass in what could be construed as a "hair band" and we "needed" a fog machine - so I made one. This was before liquid fog juice and all that DJ crapola

The whole thing was based around a 5 gallon metal bucket. The lid had a squirrel-cage blower mounted and sealed with RTV silicone. The outlet of the blower was connected to a length of flexible hose (from an old vacuum cleaner) and run behind the drummer...

There was a small "intake/feed" tube at one edge, I think I used 2" PVC pipe. This extended down to about half way from the bottom of the bucket.

A stainless steel livestock water heater element (500W??) passed through the side of the bucket (more RTV) and was used to heat about 1-2 gallons of water to something around 150 degrees F.

To use it, you pre-heated the water, then dropped chunks of dry ice into the intake tube, covered it, and then turned on the blower. Out rushed huge volumes of clean, dry ice fog. We got the dry ice from the ice cream shop, where some really cute groupie-types worked (yeah, we made some new friends alright).

And yep - I had a ~6mW HeNe and a crude speaker-cone/mirror "scanner" that was connected to a small practice amp through the mixing console to my bass guitar input channel (hey, it WAS my laser and fog machine after all) and I'll tell you what, it was really, really cool. Quite the crowd pleaser. A friend acted as the techie/roadie and operated all this great stuff from behind the scenes.

Man I would have killed to have even a 1mW greenie back then! A "GreeNe" (green helium neon), HeCd or Argon laser was just way out of reach...

/reminisce