Fog Machine as Hazer

[techie7]

I have two fog machines but for an upcoming show I just want the haze effect, not the dense fog. I want to use haze to bring out the lighting but i don't want it to be clearly visible. Is there something I can do to make my fog machines work like hazers. I don't mean going into the machine and fooling with it, i mean how can i turn the fog it produces into haze? If i have to choose between really light haze or something in between haze and fog, i would go for the lighter one.

One thought i had was to blow fog into a trash can through a hole at the bottom (like a fog chiller) and then open the lid to let out less dense fog. but i feel like the fog would go straight up and i obviously can't put the trash can in the middle of the stage.

is there something i can do that involves a fan?

Maybe an explanation of how hazers work would be helpful.

Is what i am describing a fazer? if so how do fazers work?

Thank You!

 

[MarshallPope]

If you can, your best chance with a fogger to get a light, hazy effect may be to fog the room up pretty well a while before the house opens and let it thin out. Once the show begins and it begins to disappear, you can supplement that with either the fog on a low setting or on short bursts, possibly dispersed with a fan or two. It would require some experimentation, but I think you could get something fairly satisfactory after playing around with it for a while. It really won't take much fog at all to get a light haze effect; your biggest issue will be avoiding the "cloud" coming from the direction of the fogger.

 

[MPowers]

What are the make and model of Units you have on hand?

 

[Ric]

fog - ControlBooth

haze - ControlBooth

smoke - ControlBooth

We've taken to not call anything a smoke machine as nothing is actually burnt, and people have a historical impression that they smell & affect singing, cause asthma etc. We now call all our machines either foggers or hazers based on how they create the effect.

Low foggers (cooled fog) are what we'd call a machine that emulates a dry ice effect; clouds that stay low to the ground.
Smoke/Fog machines typically heat up a water based oil mixture that is effectively 'steamed' through the device. They produce large thick clouds, that disappear fairly quickly.

Haze machines use a different mixture of fluid and are 'oil crackers'; they use a pressurising system, either compressor or CO2, to atomise the fluid in to particles. No heat is involved. The particles produced are much finer and float in the air, staying around for much longer, but less visible to the eye.

In your context I understand you have a 'smoke machine' which produces large thick clouds, which typically disappear quickly. There is always some residual hang of particles which effectively become 'haze', and you can use this to display beams of course. The trick is to hide your puffs or clouds and break that up quickly.
There are many options here; point your machine at a wall, or into a box, through a mesh etc. and use a fan to spread the diffused cloud out.
Try and see! It still won't stay around as long as 'real' haze, so you'll likely use more fluid in the machine, but it can work!

 

[MattRosco]

Here's some information on using a fan with a standard fogger to create haze...

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Creating Haze - YouTube

-Matt

 

[jbilyj]

Fans normally work pretty well.