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Many years ago, I hacked a quick slot in an old cooler to act as a discharge for chilled fog. For the past couple of years, I've been meaning to make a 'discharge chute'. The main idea was to be able to tuck the chiller away a bit more out of sight and help direct the fog a bit more.
The idea evolved from trying to add some quick cardboard or thin plywood box, adding several sections of PVC pipe side by side, or getting with the modern show and 3D printing something. I decided on 3D printing because I could take literally 5 minutes to sketch something, get it on the printer and come back a day later to a finished part. Actually less time to do that than start cutting plywood and hammering / gluing a box or some other 'hand built' piece.
So in the design phase, I knew I wanted a rectangle to maximize the area opening, but keep the fog low to the ground. I figured I should probably make a couple supports on the long sides to keep it somewhat rigid. Then an idea struck... why not use an 'egg crate' style grid in an attempt to get smooth, laminar flow which would discharge the fog across the ground in one smooth sheet!
This was actually much easier than I thought with just a couple settings in the 3D printer. Based on what I needed, I simply made a cube: 2-1/2" thick x 10-1/2" wide x 12" tall. Then in the 3D 'slicer' program, I told it to print that cube with no top and no bottom surfaces (keep both ends open) and make a square grid inner support structure at about 5% fill - which created the inner 'laminar flow' sections.
A couple minutes squaring up the old slot and a bit of hot glue and the new laminar flow discharge is attached.
As if smiling down on me for my additional work, the Fog Gods arranged for an essentially perfect Halloween evening. Temps hoving in the low to mid 60's and almost dead calm winds. Add in some traces of humidity and good ol Froggys Freezin' Fog Fluid and the results... well, the results were almost TOO good! The fog came out so thick and stuck to the ground it almost obscured the whole cemetery! lol. You could tell there were blinking and flickering lights in there, but sometimes hard to tell pumpkins from skulls from coffins! One boy asked, "...is that lava?"
Anyway, if you need a discharge chute for your fogger, give laminar flow a try! Is it super easy to make in almost any shape you need? YES! Does it help to any considerable way? Maybe!
I'll also throw a shout out to FOGduino here! I ran the Sen-Sim mode all night. This is where the fogger makes a bit of background fog all the time (I call it 'simmer') and throws out a big blast anytime the PIR sensor is triggered (when someone walks up). So all the visitors were greeted with thick blankets of fog like below, but ran all night long on barely 1/2 a tank of fog juice! My only change for next year is that I need to move the sensor a bit further up the path - to give the fog a bit more time to develop before the ToTs reach the graves!
The idea evolved from trying to add some quick cardboard or thin plywood box, adding several sections of PVC pipe side by side, or getting with the modern show and 3D printing something. I decided on 3D printing because I could take literally 5 minutes to sketch something, get it on the printer and come back a day later to a finished part. Actually less time to do that than start cutting plywood and hammering / gluing a box or some other 'hand built' piece.
So in the design phase, I knew I wanted a rectangle to maximize the area opening, but keep the fog low to the ground. I figured I should probably make a couple supports on the long sides to keep it somewhat rigid. Then an idea struck... why not use an 'egg crate' style grid in an attempt to get smooth, laminar flow which would discharge the fog across the ground in one smooth sheet!
This was actually much easier than I thought with just a couple settings in the 3D printer. Based on what I needed, I simply made a cube: 2-1/2" thick x 10-1/2" wide x 12" tall. Then in the 3D 'slicer' program, I told it to print that cube with no top and no bottom surfaces (keep both ends open) and make a square grid inner support structure at about 5% fill - which created the inner 'laminar flow' sections.
A couple minutes squaring up the old slot and a bit of hot glue and the new laminar flow discharge is attached.
As if smiling down on me for my additional work, the Fog Gods arranged for an essentially perfect Halloween evening. Temps hoving in the low to mid 60's and almost dead calm winds. Add in some traces of humidity and good ol Froggys Freezin' Fog Fluid and the results... well, the results were almost TOO good! The fog came out so thick and stuck to the ground it almost obscured the whole cemetery! lol. You could tell there were blinking and flickering lights in there, but sometimes hard to tell pumpkins from skulls from coffins! One boy asked, "...is that lava?"
Anyway, if you need a discharge chute for your fogger, give laminar flow a try! Is it super easy to make in almost any shape you need? YES! Does it help to any considerable way? Maybe!
I'll also throw a shout out to FOGduino here! I ran the Sen-Sim mode all night. This is where the fogger makes a bit of background fog all the time (I call it 'simmer') and throws out a big blast anytime the PIR sensor is triggered (when someone walks up). So all the visitors were greeted with thick blankets of fog like below, but ran all night long on barely 1/2 a tank of fog juice! My only change for next year is that I need to move the sensor a bit further up the path - to give the fog a bit more time to develop before the ToTs reach the graves!