I spent some time and managed on the second day of trying to melt Aluminum. It was pretty damn cool. In went broken chunks of disassembled hard drives and out came molten metal. Pretty cool… but also very inefficient. I need to think about building a better one.
Next steps:
- Acquire the appropriate pail, bucket or container to serve as the outside
- Acquire the things I need to mix up the refractory material to line it with
- Get some good inlet pipe to handle the airflow issue
- Airflow supply blower. I have a lot of the fans used for computers on my hands and I think they will be perfect. I may need to use a old power supply to run them. I’d rather find one that ran off AC directly.
- Find a good crucible – a coffee or soup can should do. No need to pay big $$$
After that, it should be the work of a long afternoon to put together, and it will need about 3 days to cure / dry. This weekend probably won’t be the time but hopefully I can get it all done by Dec 1.
Resources:
- Ed Halligan’s Bean-O-Matic Forge
- Metal home
- metalcasting and general metalworking links
- Making Insulating Castable Refractory from Common Material
- Making a Propane-Fired Coffee-Can Foundry
- The New and Improved Lil’ Bertha – Aluminum Foundry
- Coffee Can Foundry MkII
- Aluminum Foundry – Home
- Backyard aluminum foundry – hack a day – www.hackaday.com