Newbie here but I’m interested in the possibility of Nitinol or muscle wire. From what I read it changes shape with an electric current but in what dimension ?
Does it actually contract or just reform ?
If I secured a single loop around a bottle , would the circumference reduce ?
By how much ?
And what current is required ?
Thank you for your help, Brett.
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Hi Brett,
Welcome to the forum 
I’ve only read about the Flexinol and Muscle Wire and assumed they were different names for the same thing but it turns out they do behave a little differently. There is a great demo of them in the end of this video.
Current requirements vary between the Flexinol and Muscle Wire versions with 1.5A and 200mA respectively.
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Thanks Spookee for the quick reply. Cool Avatar too !
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Typically metals expand when heated. For wires, the majority of this expansion is linear (lengthwise). Nitinol wire contracts when heated. The linear contraction is usually very small. Ideally, it would be better to use a length of a wire to estimate how much is the change and plan your project accordingly.
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Thank you for the information, at the end of the video they say that Flexinol shrinks by 4-5% and Nitinol not as much. It’s an intruiging characteristic to think about.
Thanks, Brett.
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Nitinol contracts but takes a long time to cool and return to its original shape, can anyone give me ideas about a material or system that would be able to cycle every second ? I’ve thought of making a pneumatic system but I wanted this experiment to be threaded into fabric. Any ideas ?
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Hi Brett,
How big is the area you are trying to move? If we could have a bit more info that would help a ton.
It does sound like you’ll need some sort of fluid pump driving your system to get the cycle rate you want.
If you’re moving the fabric over some material could you use magnets to move it around?
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I’m looking to make a compression garment for burns victims, so it needs to be able to apply gentle pressure, and then relax.
Here’s a similar material that could work…
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