Current capacity for Kanthal wire
well, at 240V not that extra 15% voltage (over 208V) makes 33% extra heat. That could well be too much heat.

If you can get two microwave oven transformers and replace the secondary windings with 16V windings (about 16 turns of wire) you can build a step-down autotransformer,







simulate this circuit &ndash; Schematic created using CircuitLab

such a setup should be good for 60A output with no problems.

Running the primariries at 104 instead of 120 will significantly reduce heating of the transformer as they are normally run fairly close ot saturation.