DIY Food Cold Smoking Gun!
by JGJMatt in Workshop > 3D Printing
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DIY Food Cold Smoking Gun!
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Hello fellow makers,
Have you ever yearned for that smokey barbeque flavour but the cold weather just won't allow you to use your smoker outside, you're feeling a little adventurous and want to smoke some spices or be the talk of the town with your smoke infused drinks?
Well now you can... And it's quick and easy
Simply fill the chip holder with a tablespoon of your favourite wood smoking chips and with a press of a button you'll have streams of dense flavour packed smoke.
In this Instructable I'll be showing you how you can make your own cold smoking gun with the use of a 3D printer and a few readily available parts.
Let's get going!..
Supplies
To replicate this Instructable you will need the following:
- Access to a 3D printer for the enclosure
You're going to need a filament that can resist the heat that comes from the heating coil, PETG will work and is printable on virtually all hobby printers.
- 5015 Fan
- Micro switch
- 18650 Li-ion battery
This will need to be a high drain battery as linked
- Li-ion charging plus boost board
Amazon - Charging + boost board
- Nichrome wire
Amazon - Nichrome wire sample pack
The length will be determined by the resistance of the wire you have
- Wire ferrules
- 25mm Capacitor or similar sized aluminium/stainless steel container
Amazon - Capacitor *as example
- Ceramic isolator
I used these ceramic fuses, just took off the two caps and emptied them.
- High temperature silicone
Amazon - Red high temp silicone
- Soldering iron and solder
*As an Amazon Associate I receive a small percentage from sales made through provided links at no cost to you, this helps fund future projects.
Design and Print:
The design of the smoker is based around easily accessible parts so that anyone will be able to find the necessary parts without the need to modify the design.
I printed mine using two different types of filament, the main body in orange is printed using PETG as it is not subjected to any of the high temperature but still needs to be strong and rigid while the two sides and nozzle is printed using SBS (Styrene-butadiene-styrene) which is like a mix between ABS and TPU and has a high deformation temperature and a nice rubbery feel (the shoes you are wearing right now most likely has a SBS sole).
The whole print should be okay using just PETG as it it not subjected to heat for long and the use of high heat silicone in between the wood chip container and print should protect it as well.
My print settings are as follows:
Material: PETG and SBS
The main orange body was printed in PETG and the two covers and nozzle was printed with black SBS.
Speed: 40mm/s
Temp: 240 degC Nozzle and 90 degC Bed
Nozzle: 0.6mm
Making the Heating Coil:
Now we need to make our heating coil, this is the part that will either make or break your project.
First you will need to cut the required length of nichrome wire for the coil. The nichrome wire you bought will specify the ohms per ft/m, we want to cut a piece with about 0.7ohms resistance.
You can find tune the length by hooking up the wire to your battery with some crocodile clips, you want the wire to start glowing red about three seconds after connecting the battery.
After getting the desired length of wire we need to attach some silicone wire to each end. The best way to do this is to use some wire crimps.
To support the heating coil I used a ceramic isolator/standoff, this withstands the heat from the nichrome wire whilst keeping it from bending when adding the wood chips.
The Woodchip Holder:
Next we need our wood chip holder.
This will need to be either aluminium or stainless steel to resist the heat generated by the heating coil inside of it. I first wanted to use a stainless steel shot glass but when I was designing the smoker I used a 25mm capacitor from my salvaged parts bin for the mock-up and it worked so well that I decided to keep it in the final design plus the aluminium shell is much easier to work with.
First make sure there is no charge left in the capacitor, then using my Dremel with a cutoff blade I removed the top that's crimped over the rubber seal so that I could pull out the contents so that we are left with the bare shell.
I used some sandpaper to just clean up any burrs left from cutting.
Next we need to make a hole for the heating coil wiring to fit through.
And finally using the same cutoff blade I made some slits in the side of the container where the fan will pull the air through.
Assembling: Part 1
Now we can start the assembly process.
First I added a blob of the high heat silicone around the wires at the base of the heating coil and inserted it into the aluminium container, make sure the heating coil is centred in the container and is far away from all the sides to avoid any shorts against the bare aluminium.
Next we can stick the assembled aluminium container into the its cavity in the handle with the same high heat silicone, I made sure not to squish it in too tight as to leave about a millimetre of silicone between the printed part and the container just as an additional heat barrier.
Finally you can route the wires of the heating coil in the slotted part of the handle (I just used some CA "super glue" to keep them in place) to keep them from interfering with the fan blades.
Modify the Charging/booster Board:
By default the booster circuit is permanently on when a battery is connected to the charger, for our application we need it to be switched on when the button is depressed otherwise our fan will run constantly.
To achieve this we simply need to cut the trace going from the battery positive to the voltage input of the boost converter as pictured and scrape off some solder mask to create a new voltage input pad.
Assembling: Part 2
Onto the final assembly!
We can now assemble the electronics and close it up.
Following the picture above solder your electronics as follow:
- Battery positive goes to BAT+ on the charging board
- Battery negative goes to BAT- on the charging board
- A second thick gauge wire goes from battery positive to the N/O normally open tab on the micro switch
- From the COM tab on the micro switch a wire goes to the new solder pad we created on the boost/charge board
- The one end of the heating coil also gets connected to the COM tab of the micro switch
- The other end of the heating coil goes directly to the battery negative
- Red fan positive wire goes to VOUT+ on the charging board
- Black fan negative wire goes to the VOUT- on the charging board
You can adjust your fan speed using the little potentiometer on the output side of the boost/charging board.
All of the components will simply push slot their places with no additional adhesives required.
*The charging board will need a piece of double sided adhesive to stay in place, slot will be added on updated file.
After assembling the electronics you can simply attach the lid with three 3mm self tapping screws.
Make It Stand Out:
This is of course totally optional but I decided to add some paint to the text to make it pop.
Simply fill the embossed text with thinned paint and let it dry completely. Once it is completely dry you can sand down the excess paint with some fine sandpaper.
The Nozzle:
I designed the smoker to have a removable nozzle, that way you can adjust it to fit the pipe you want to use or fit into containers you might want to use.
The nozzle can be adjusted using the plain fitting on the Tinkercad project above.
Downloads
Updates:
All updates will be posted here:
- I increased the height of the main body to make more space for the charging/boost board.
- Print in place trigger has been altered but might still need some post processing for some printers.
- Added "blank" nozzle to Tinkercad project.
Enjoy!
