# Cleaning heating element in a fog machine??



## niblique71

I have an old 400W fog machine which I LOVE. It worked fine in testing this season but I made the mistake of letting it run dry one evening. It stopped working even though It only ran dry for about a minute. I took it apart and tested the pump flow and that probably wasn't the issue (I cleaned it anyway). I checked all of the other plumbing and that was fine. I tried to clean the heater element from both ends with a welding tip cleaner and added plenty of Isopropal Alcohol to try to free it up. To test that the element was working I dribbled a little bit of fog juice into the exit side and it actually produced a few short bursts of fog. I even tried to use compressed air to force it clean but that didn't work at all.

Is there another way to clean out a heating element??? I've done a few searches in here and on the web and couldn't find anything on cleaning or freeing up one of these. PLEASE HELP... I love this old machine and there seems to be nothing else wrong with it.


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## Otaku

Some of the heater channels are actually a spiraled brass insert. You'll probably wreck it if you try to remove it from the heater block. When I cleaned my old Lite FX fogger, I used a small (20cc) syringe to squirt the IPA into the channel, then set it on end. I poured more alcohol into the recess where the spiral insert was seated and let it sit for ~30 mins, then blew compressed air into the channel. I had to repeat this several times before the clog dissolved and cleared the tube.


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