Machine Smoke Machine Please Answer: What can I use as smoke without a smoke machine, dry ice, or anything that has chemicals in it?
I'm doing something for Odyssey of the Mind, (where you do theater and stuff) and we don't know what to use as smoke. We're not allowed to use chemicals or water which is not good because I don't know what else to do. We already thought of doing something with the scenery. If you could please help that would be great because we have a meeting tomorrow. Thanks! : )
Use a long sheet of very soft "flowy" material. Have a person on either side of the stage (behind the curtain of course!) hold it and gently and slowly wave it up and down to suggest smoke.
How do you create smoke that hugs the floor from a smoke machine?
I need to know how to create that low hanging smoke that you see so frequently on stage shows so it essentiall covers the floor of the stage. We have a magnum 800. I was just wondering if there was a simple easy and prefferably cheap way to do it
As always there is more than one way to do this. The dry ice method works very well indeed - but there are three issues that can sometimes cause problems.
Firstly from a safety point of view, if you use a LOT of CO2 and have split level staging, you can end up with "wells" of co2 forming at lower levels. Extremely rare for it to cause problems, but there HAVE been a few cases where folks had breathing difficulty.
Secondly is cost. Dry ice is not cheap if you want a lot of it and a lot of the time. Brilliant for a "one-off" - bits of dry ice in a bucket of hot water/oil and away you go. Use care if using oil and/or large lumps at a time.
Thirdly is availability. Dry ice is not ideal if you are stuck in the middle of nowhere (dry ice is not that easy to but in the UK for most people) - though you CAN make it from co2 gas - though a bit wasteful.
So......... Dry ice is not always the answer if you want cheap, flexible, safe, regular.
What you CAN do is use a regular machine and then chill the output down.
Professional unit use powerful units (essentially air conditioning units) and this take the output from the fog machine in a WIDE diameter pipe, painted matt black ion the outside. This helps to lose some of the heat quickly. After a metre or two of black pipe, the fog will have already cooled greatly - and is now pulled into the A/C unit which chills it before spitting it out. As it is now MUCH cooler than before - and cooler that the surrounding air, it is very happy to hug the ground, denser and colder.
If you have a domestic air-con unit and a length of metal "extractor fan conduit", spray it black and link the two together. for short burst, you might be happily surprised at how well it works.
If you do not have that ability, then for SMALL amounts, you can get a large polystyrene box, use a good two metre run of metal conduit between fog machine and polystyrene box, and then pack the box with bags of ice. Attach a good strong fan on the box to "pull" the smoke out and have it on only when the smoke machine is running. (to keep it as cold as possible for as long as possible).
When you activate the system, the fog starts off hot and floaty, two metres of black pipe later it is little more than room temp. It is then pushed/pulled through a few cubic feet of box, loosely filled with "ice cube bags". (If you have a BIG drip tray then just loose ice cubes). The fan then blows the chilled smoke out the bottom.
This works (to a point) BUT you will lose a lot of your output until you get the hose length right - too much and most of your fog condenses back to glycerine and water - hence no fog
Too little pipe and the fog will not really be cooled enough.
If you have an A/C unit, play with it
NB: I would also suggest you use a HEAVY fog fluid mixture too - basically they just throw in more glycerine and a lot less water.
*** UPDATE ***
Spotted this in my email, thought you might be interested:- http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-Fog-Chiller-for-10/
I have to admit, one of the things that I love about the folks I know is that, as varied as they may be, when a smoke machine randomly goes off, many people immediately think “Tiny Stonehenge!”
I have to admit, one of the things that I love about the folks I know is that, as varied as they may be, when a smoke machine randomly goes off, many people immediately think “Tiny Stonehenge!”
You say the police are already involved. They will investigate, refer the case to the DA for charges, and if the DA agrees, he will be arrested.
All you have to do is call the cops and show up to testify