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newbie needs help,heated jacket!!

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camnz_2008

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hi all im new to the site and having no knowlage in electronics at all thought id post a few questions here and see what happens.ive been trying to make a heated jacket to wear on my motorbike,jackets that ive found online are very expencive with prices starting around £150 so i started to experiment at home.i started with buying a heated carseat cover off ebay and removed the heating wire element from it and sewed it into the lining of the jackt,solidered a plug n the end and connected it to the battery.this worked well the first time i tested it but gets way to hot!!ive tryed to put a variable resistor in but it keeps blowing up,someone recomended a thyristor switch????2nd problem the wire is so fine that everytime i use the jacket i have to re-solider the wire because it seems to break if it gets bent.the jackets on the market use carbon fibre elements is this expencive and easy to get hold of in the uk?any help would be appreciated as i use my bike every day and yep....winter is comming:eek:
cheers cam(from nz)
 
hi,
This is the wire you want, 'expensiv'e.

Coiled Nickel-Chromium Alloy Resistance Wire

You could buy mains electric fire coil wound heating elements, this is resistance wire.
If you consider a 1000W element at 240V [about 60R] then at 12Vdc your talking about 60Watts by making up say 5 off 12W pads at 12R each.

Rather than having the wire loop thru all the garment, why not make up some heating pads in a firm covering. Insert these in 'pockets' on the garment.
They could be interlinked with flexible wire.

EDIT: bit more detail.
The pads would be made up of 20% length of the original wire, which is about 60R when hot.
So each pad could be a 12R length of wire, so thats 12V/12R = 1Amp = 12Watts/pad
Wire the pads is series or parallel to get the required heating cover,
 
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cheers eric i checked out the link u gave me and it looks like the wire would do the job but 'yep' its expencive!alot more flexible looking than the wire ive got but i think for the price and effort involved could be eaiser to save my ££ and buy a proper one.i like the idea of the panels tho exept id like the back of the jacket heated more than the front as it seems to keep me warmer than just the front heated up.cheers
 
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