Metal Casting Zone Info Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Backyard’

Very simple aluminum melting and pouring rig – firebrick, cast iron crucible, charcoal, air-bed inflater.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!!!!! An overview of my aluminum foundry. Only cost me about $30 bucks at Ace Hardware. Got some scrap aluminum at a welding yard for free and tried to mold them into ingots using a wal-mart muffin pan.

Casting parts for a model engine in alloy.

Making sand cores as used in Metal casting at Home part 1 and 4

In part one I made the sand mould. Now I melt metal and complete the casting.

How to make a greensand mould using a loose piece.

The first of 12 videos showing how I make alloy castings in my home made foundry. Part one shows how the mould is made and in part two the metal is melted and poured.

Furnace burners most likely create more than needed problems for the hobby metal casting worker, it is not bizarre to read about people who are trying to build a furnace, only to be presented with Problems and disappointment with a complex burner?

Come visit us right here for more Metal Casting Info and get two Metal Casting Ebooks Backyard Foundry.
http://www.metalcastingzone.com/

It is quite straightforward to construct a crucible furnace, but the stumbling block looks to be : “The burner”. Why?

Problems seem to manifest themselves because :

For some reason, folk decide to fabricate complex burners from detailed drawings without the skills, tooling and machining facilities in which the original designer employed during the design & building process.

With the required workshop talents coupled with a fair choice of kit & tools, will have a marked effect on how well you, as a pastime foundry worker, will be ready to construct the hardware needed for the successful melting of metal.

There are no short cuts when it comes to building equipment for your pastime foundry, to cobble something together in a coarse fashion is only asking for trouble in the future, it is well to heed the old trade faculty teacher quote :
“If a job is worth doing, you may as well do it properly in the first place”
He’s right, you know.

You can learn how to build an effective straightforward furnace burner, which is well documented in the past-time foundry PDF “Metal Casting Made Easy” available at our internet site. But to explain everything in detail here would take up far too much time & space.

Following is a simplified description :

The burner is composed of a long plain black mild steel pipe. The burner end nozzle consists of an inverted cone. There is a mid section where a venturi is installed ; the gas jet is located close to the venturi.

The easy brass jet sticks out into the forced air stream, which travels through the burner tube. The gas jet orifice is quite large and operates under low pressure ; the air delivered by the blower to the burner tube is low pressure, but moves at a high volume.

The burner design is simple, yet effective, but there are some components incorporated in the design that only need basic lathe turning skills. But general workshop data is enough to build this item. There’s no difficult concerned.

The blower consists of a second hand household vacuum cleaner ( the type that has a 2nd outlet for the hose connection that blows ). The vac also has an electronic vari motor speed control, which enables a controlled low-volume airflow to be delivered during the burner start up phase.

This feature is most vital during the furnace start up.

Does this burner work? You bet it does, the burner is capable of melting a five Kg ( 11lbs ) charge of aluminum from a cold start in less than 40 minutes.

The gas supply is provided from a Liquid petrol ( LP ) cylinder ( Propane in the states ) It is essential the gas supply be controlled by an adjustable industrial diaphragm gas regulator gauge appropriate for LP gas, there’s no other SAFE way to regulate & deliver fuel gas to a furnace burner. A ball valve should be installed in line as an emergency shut off valve.

Come visit us right here for more Metal Casting Info and get two Metal Casting Ebooks Backyard Foundry.
http://www.metalcastingzone.com/