First Casting Parts

[cg 2005]

This is the second melt from the furnace. I have modified the furnace by adding exterior sand insulation, adjusted the torch position and increased the gas flow since the first melt. I can now melt 40 cubic inches of Al in less than 25 minutes. This is enough to cast a 2"x2" by 10" ingot for machining with some left over.


Pot's right:




Furnace:




Heating:




Ingot poured and left over melt poured into the funnel leading to a cylindrical hole in the ground:




Completed ingots:





Cutting, turning and milling the ingots:








Completed highway peg mount for BMW, the final finish was sanded to rough it for potential powder coating:








Supervisor approves;

 

[12bolts]

Nice job Rockland,
Looks like a mixture of castings and billet ally in your crucible? Any problems with dross in that mix?
What type of sand is that you are using there? Completed project looks mighty fine.

Cheers Phil

 

[cg 2005]

The mix in the pot is a little bit of everything except cans. I know for certain there is 6061, but the remainder is whatever aluminum. I only did minimal skimming to remove dross. I did not note any interior porosity or observable foreign matter during machining.

The sand is a very clean, fine grained quartz Florida beach sand from the Big Bend area of NW Florida.

 

[davidh]

the sand looks like powdered sugar. beautiful. and tell us if it was a bit gummy to machine ?

 

[Old Iron]

Back when I was a shanty Shaker ( Mobile Home ) I had to take some to the nudest colony in Kissimmee, Boy that was a eye opener Glad I didn't have to go more than twice.

Looks like you have it figure out, Is the heater you using like the ones they use on asphalt?

Paul

 

[cg 2005]

the sand looks like powdered sugar. beautiful. and tell us if it was a bit gummy to machine ?

Yes, most Florida sand is sugar sand.

Not at all gummy thanks to a previous comment by RayC about using WD-40. So I use a 20% solution of Prime Cut and water for everything but the final thin cuts which I use WD-40. I get a very nice finish.



This is after squaring up a piece cut off the ingot. The small scratches are from sliding it across the table steel table top.



Here the piece is machined to size bored out. You can see a couple of the tag lines for various milling and boring. The final finish will be fly cut with WD-40 or sanded depending on the customer's desire.

 

[cg 2005]

Back when I was a shanty Shaker ( Mobile Home ) I had to take some to the nudest colony in Kissimmee, Boy that was a eye opener Glad I didn't have to go more than twice.

Looks like you have it figure out, Is the heater you using like the ones they use on asphalt?

Paul

It is still there and the have aged even more. Not a pretty sight.

I guess the torch could be used for asphalt. According to HF it is supposed to be 500,000 btu. It was $19.00 at HF. I am sure I could 3000° F if I needed that much.