DJ Equipment Reviews

Basic must-knows about your fog machine

No doubt music, your DJ skills and your equipment make the most of the party, but in this day and age, people have gotten used to "auxiliaries", shall we call them. Things like lighting, staging and the fog machines that create that fuzzy warm (maybe colored) steam, they all add to how a party is going to be remembered, and how a party is going to be remembered is usually also how a DJ is going to be remembered, so it’s no wonder DJs today have to work around so many notions so different from what they’re supposed to do in the first place. With this post, I’m trying to chip in and maybe help some working DJs get a grip on the basics of a fog machine.

A fog machine ( aka fogger) is basically a machine dedicated to producing that nice party fog, not just smoke or steam, but it pretty much works on the same principles as a steamer. In its most brutal form, a fog machine could be broken down to:

• a tank of sorts or some kind of compartment to hold the fluid
• the most important part of the fogger, the fluid which will become fog eventually
• a fluid pump, that’s used to move the fluid around as needed
• finally, a heated chamber (aka heat exchanger or heater block) where the temperature goes to a whooping 400 degrees F

I don’t need to spell it out for you, since you probably suspect the process behind foggers by now: the fluid pump gets fluid from the tank into the heated chamber, where because of the high temperature, it flashes instantly to vapors and because of the pressure created, it goes out through a nozzle and onto the dance floor. With today’s technology, DJs should know that fog machines too have become quite complicated in some parts, but the functioning principles remain pretty much the same in all foggers.

The main problem for some DJs is wether they can use other fluid rather than the fog machine brand, or for that matter, some home made fluids for the same effect. Well, I’ll give it to you straight, given those principles, which are all physics and none patented or specific, you could probably use any fluid out there and the fog machine will still create fog. However, there’s some things you need to be aware of before putting some used cooking oil or something in your fogger.

Each fog machine is designed to work at certain temperatures, and consequently, they work best with the same brand fog fluid. If you go around and mix fluid and fog machines, you may have some unpleasant surprises, maybe a "wetter" fog that leaves a slippery liquid in its trail (this usually happens when the fog machine works at a temperature lower than the one needed by that particular fluid) or the fogger overheats the fluid, turning it into a smelly smoke that, depending on what’s in your fluid, could also contain some chemicals you wouldn’t want to inhale. As for the fluid, which is arguably the most important part in your fogging system, although it is water-based, it’s also non-toxic and has a special formula from company to company, but it’s not supposed to leave any residue behind. If yours does, you might want to look into your fog machine or maybe contact the manufacturer before a bigger problem comes up.

The principles behind fog machine might be simple, but you need to be completely informed before trying something that could damage your fog machine or worse, so make sure you get all the info you can on your current fogging configuration. Other than that, it’s pretty simple: you use good brand products, maybe pay a little more, but you’ll have top notch fog at your party, or you buy something cheap, not recommended or home made, and you’ll be able to see it in the results, which might not be to your liking. It’s like it is everywhere.

I hope this has given you an insight into how fog machines work and that it’s actually not that much to it, so nothing to be scared about, but you do need to be careful. In the near future I’ll probably have another post about fog machines and their maintenance, maybe some helpful do’s and dont’s for the working DJ out there.

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