Nichrome wire burning

I'm building a nichrome wire hot end, and I think my nichrome is getting too hot. I use the host software to ramp up the temperature using the default values (205 degrees at 0.2 degrees per second), and by the time it reaches 205 the insulation on the nichrome wire is almost completely black/dark brown. I'm guessing this isn't normal/sustainable.

I'm using an 8 ohm piece of wire, and I've confirmed that I'm getting 12 volts from the RAMPS 1.4 I'm using.The wire is wrapped pretty tightly around the barrel. What could I be missing?

Are you using the furnace putty over the nichrome wire? Here is a link to the directions for the Makergear Hot End using nichrome wire:

[www.makergear.com]

Jim K.

How well are you insulating the wire if at all? I found that this kind of hot end looses heat REALLY fast. During my trials with this design I found that the wire insulation would burn more if I had less insulation. I think it is a matter of the control continuously pumping out mass qty's of current in order to heat up the tip, and prevent the tip from cooling. Try either the furnace cement or just wrapping the wire/sensor/tip in a lot of tape.

I'm not using any additional insulation, just a few layers of kapton tape to keep the wire in place (image attached).
I'll try getting some cement.

I am using a 30 awg (.010) wire with an old IBM Laptop power supply with an output of 16V and 4.5A to cut styrofoam, it heats up about 2 feet of the wire quickly, so 4.5A x 16V = 72W if that helps anyone...