Metal Casting Zone Info Blog

Posts Tagged ‘DIY’

Demolding my an address sign for the house, which I cast from aluminum using a simple investment casting technique. See my other video for the pour. The pattern is foam, which is vaporized by molten aluminum, which then fills the cavity. I design plastic housings for a living and so constantly think about the part as it exists in a mold. A lot of effort goes into designing parts that are manufacturable and then chosing gating and mold constructoins that work. Some of that experience has been proving useful in my DIY casting efforts, even though plastic injection tooling is a totally different world. If there’s interest, I’ll keep posting videos of my metal casting experiments.

Making my own foundry furnace at home for melting aluminum. I came up with this design based on what i’ve seen others doing on You-tube, both DIY and pro guys (especially Tubalcain). I’m a firm believer that you get out what you put in. This project took about 6 weeks of part time work to do. Nothing was outsourced for fabrication. Everything was designed on the computer first. The acrylic brick moulds were made in one of the shops I regularly deal with that has a CNC. This furnace was designed around the need for single person operation and portability. I also had large reservations about casting the refractory cement (which is very expensive) in one piece. This would have also made the finished furnace body unmovable by one person. Casting bricks also allowed easer/effective/controlled construction and assembly. This also makes it very easy to dismantle and clean the unit. This has also been designed for possible production, so anyone with a marketing saavy that finds this interesting should contact me.