Induction heating pipes

What would be involved is you doing your auction / ebay thing to find a commercial induction heating / soldering unit cheap.

Two issues that may present themselves -

- Induction heaters usually require the item to be heated to be passed into the middle of the induction coil, which may present a logistical challenge for the pipes.

- Soldering copper pipes, if that's the intention, doesn't need "red hot" and indeed "red hot" would be a problem.

The wikipedia article has a lot of good links at the bottom for do-it-yourself induction heating projects.

What about using an old induction stove top as the basis and work from there?

Recently the Chinese have gotten into the induction heating business. About 3 years ago, I set up a demonstration of a modern 5kw US made unit for our blacksmithing club. This size would easily heat your friend's pipe. But, it cost $28,000 althought they would have sold us their demo unit for a mere $14,000! About a year later, a chinese company came out with a knock off of a VERY similar unit for about $3,500. I know a couple of guys who have them and they are happy with them.

About Coil shapes: There is some real art to making coils for the machines. The shapes. For your friend' application, for instance: Imagine makin a coil that was a rectangle, let's say 4" X 6", with the in and out tubes coming out of the center of a 4" side. Now bend the rectangle (at the other 4" side) into a semi circle. Now you have a coil that can heat about 6" of tubing at a time as the work piece is lowered into it. There are tables that come with the machines, I think, that show how much efficiency is lost when coils are less than 100% efficient, but in many cases, the efficiency drop isn't bad enough to worry about.

Pete Stanaitis

------------------

Ignoramus21198 wrote: