smoke generator for factory smoke stack

after trying out smoke units from different things we went with this.

https://www.harbormodels.com/smokegenerator.html

we did have to rebuild the unit with different wick but since have had no issues.

we attached a 30 second timer or we get smoked out.

Thanks for the link-
That's unfortunately, 75% of the complete budget for this project...

Roger, I've had very good luck with the Bachmann smoke units for buildings and smoke stacks. They far have outlasted any Seuthe smoke generator I've ever had. You have to be careful soldering wires to the unit. You'll see two plastic molded pieces that stick up from the main unit, with wires connected around them. I've used stranded wire that I wrap around those, then hit with a drop of solder to help hold them.

I then connect those stranded wires to heavier gauge solid wire, which holds the unit in place inside the smoke stack.

The link is to the Bachmann parts, with a search topic of smoke units. There are several types, all of similar design, just slightly different sizes. I've used the HO ones, but there is also a large scale one. These shouldn't kill you budget!

http://estore.bachmanntrains.c...;sort=20a&page=2

Another way to go is an ultrasonic vaporizer?  eBay: 272892279099; C $11.99, Approximately US $9.36

Voltage: 24V DC
Color:black
Item size: 36*36*25mm

Go to your local hippy store and get some incense.  Jeff

I looked at those vaporizers, and almost purchased one. I would need to enclose it in a container and add a fan to take the fog up the stack, I just wasn't real sure how the scenery would fare after hours of moisture...

I tried incense sticks, but I couldn't find the right combination of air inlet to keep them burning inside a piece of 1/2" emt conduit. Plus, they really, really stink...

With the Bachman units, do you need a fan to get the smoke up the chimney?

if so, how is that done?

Roger,

you may may want to look at Halloween fog machines, Walmart has them listed for $25 or so.  This could go under the table and us3 a tube to the factory.

  Why not a modified fan smoke unit? With a lower heat resistor and or limiting the impeller intake opening; and/or difussion using a 3 stack manifold I think it would slow the stream enough. Lowering heat should help fluid last.

 Or if it's just too fast coming out of the stack, maybe feed the chamber with an old air pump and tubing. 

For adding fluid, gas model plane plumbing could provide a tiny brass port for syringe refill. Or maybe weedwacker tubing/fittings.

If you really want to safeguard, put a saucer under that steaming tea cup I.e. putting a spill pan in rhe structure and under the unit to handle an overfill would be prudent.

Lionel's 50% off parts sale is this weekend. In a smoke unit repair thread Nov 1st or 2cd there was plastic smoke unit for a small can motored switcher, and I think full price listed is $14 and change. it is port fed air from a piston so I bet you could plumb an air line to it pretty easy. There is a mininum purchase I'm sure, but I bet you could a backup or two, and squeeze in some other inevitable necessities too.

I have used a track powered or PS1 MTH smoke unit to smoke my buildings. I ran a plumbing with fish tank tube around the layout so I could add smoke multiple buildings within a reasonable distance from the smoke unit.

I wasn't sure that would work on the exhaust side 

Jeff2035 wrote: With the Bachman units, do you need a fan to get the smoke up the chimney?

No, it is not a fan driven unit, but it still puts out an acceptable amount of smoke. This is why I mentioned the heavier gauge wire as a support to keep the unit about an inch or so from the top of your chimney or smoke stack. There are certainly other ways to keep the smoke unit near the top of your smoke stack, such as running the wires through a pipe or tube that is a couple inches shorter than your smoke stack height.

The advantage with this unit, is your smoke stack can be as tall as you wish. With a fan driven unit, the chimney would have to be short enough to allow the smoke through to the top, or you would need some kind of tube for the smoke to travel through.

The other issue is that the fan driven smoke units are troublesome and problematic. They often need to be tinkered with, which means a mounting application where the unit is easily accessible for repair. I have messed around with fan driven smoke units in the past, and as nice as the smoke output is, they are not worth all the trouble, at least to me.

I've had some of these Bachmann units for many years and they still work. Not bad considering their cost versus the Seuthe units or anything else for that matter.

The issue with large quantities of smoke from a smoke unit will be venting the smoke, no such problem with water vapor.  I think you'll find that the scenery will fare much better with a higher humidity than with vast quantities of vaporized mineral oil!

What are dimensions of your model?  How tall are the smoke stacks - specifically the diameter and length of the "tubes" that would transport the smoke?  Obviously there are pretty skinny smoke unit for HO; the point being is it worth pursuing installing 3x fan-less smoke units in the 3 stacks.

My first inclination is to pursue a fan-based smoke unit - particularly one where you have separate access to the smoke heater element and the smoke fan motor - such as the MTH PS2 or PS3 units.  I'd see you can get your hands on one of the larger units from a G-gauge engine.  Then, with 2 wires to the heater and 2 wires to the fan, using a pair of 99 cent adjustable DC-to-DC voltage regulator modules, you can independently fine-tune the fan-speed and heater-power.  I'd power the entire contraption with DC for which it's easy to find a $2 wall-wart adapter or derive DC from AC-accessory voltage using a 25 cent bridge rectifier.  I'm think you need less than 10 Watts of total power (for heater and fan).  DC-powered timer modules to cycle the unit 1 minute on, 5 minutes off (or whatever) are a few bucks.

The plumbing is the fun part.  I think you'll have to mess a bit with any manifold or tubing splitter to equalize the smoke flow if you want approximately even smoke distribution to the 3 stacks.  With smoke, the slightest variations in outlet-pressure from tubing geometry can have a seemingly out-sized effect on smoke flow.

I'd think a gravity-fed capped tube into a hole drilled into the reservoir is sufficient for refill.  Or if a the plumbing has a continuously downward (e.g,, no right-angle bends) you could drip down a smoke stack as done for our engines.  Since you don't have the space constraints of an engine, I'd consider fabricating a larger reservoir.  As long as the wick is not allowed to dry and turn to "charcoal" it doesn't have to draw from the factory-sized fluid-pool.  I'm also imagining some scheme where with a custom designed reservoir, you could incorporate a gauge or level indicator of some sort.

And, needless to say, make provisions to access and swap out the wick and fan motor.

I'd be interested if someone has successfully used one of those vaporizers (distilled water) in a fan-driven design with many inches of plumbing/tubing.  My initial thought was condensation on the inner walls of the long lengths of tubing such that the "fog" never makes it up and out.  Seems the performance of the unit might vary depending on a hot vs. cold day, a dry vs. humid day, etc. 

  This is the smallest I've done so far. A silicon pill box with about 30hrs of run time holding a post war element. A fiber washer insulated the element from the bronze "stack's" flange. I cooked the element dropping it on live track when I checked to see how it looked inside.   But I learned the heat was no problem and it didn't leak. Over filled once, I had to invert the loco to drain it and get smoke again, lol.