Cheap Plastics Bender, and a bit of a ramble

>I bought a toaster oven from Goodwill for $10 and removed all four 12
>inch long Calrod heating elements. I say Calrod, which is a brand
>name, and mean the type of element in a metal tube with MgO
>insulation, not the wire coil in a quartz tube. They were wired 2/2
>series/parallel in the toaster oven and each rate 575 watts.
>
>I chucked one in the lathe drill chuck and placed the wire end loosely
>in a tailstock drill chuck, then applied abrasive paper. I noticed the
>outermost ends could be sandpapered to a bare steel finish, while most
>of the length would not give up its grey oxide finish, most likely
>from use in the oven.
>
>I strapped one onto the inner surface of a bend I'd made before in 1/4
>inch acrylic, connected it to a 300 watt lamp dimmer, ran the power up
>slowly until the dimmer made the noise characteristic of passing and
>clipping AC power, and ran the power all the way down, to find that at
>this setting, the element would not even boil water. I ran it up very
>slowly, and eventually got a pretty clean re-bend in the acrylic. A
>half-wave rectifier would have doubled the control range. Full power
>to one element would fry the cheap $5 dimmer. Four elements in series
>definitely would not.
>
>I'll clean the stuck plastic off the element with lathe sanding as
>before. Maybe I'll wrap it with Tefflon tape next time. There was only
>a little sticking.
>

>I have the $40 metal bending brake from Harbor Frieght and hope to
>integrate one element into the brake to heat plastics at or near the
>bend point so they can be accurately bent. I'll need a bend clamp or
>stop while the whole setup cools. I overloaded my bender and the steel
>pivot body cracked. Cheap Chinese shit and one year warranty expired.
>I'll have to duplicate the bending bar clamp holes and the mating
>threaded holes in the back half of the new bender. The pivot body, of
>course, was made of compressed Diet Tab bottle caps. :)
>
>I'm just reporting on some of the fun I've been having here at
>Replikon Research, working mostly on the MOEPED for my one-credit
>Seminar and Project at NVCC, PHY 298, and developing a fully expanded
>specification for a self-reproducing universal machine tool. And it is
>fun. :)
>
>A fully expanded universal machine tool could make it's own
>transparent plastic machine guards, could mill flutes in a drill, mill
>or reamer bit, grind or regrind bits, etc. There are lots of loose
>ends to finish off.
>
>Doug Goncz
>Replikon Research
>Seven Corners, VA 22044-0394
>(Why not send me a QSL? That's a valid, complete postal address, at
>least the clerk said it is.)