POTD- PROJECT OF THE DAY: What Did You Make In Your Shop Today?

GoceKU said:
Yesterday i bought me 3 on this smart battery chargers left one to top up a spare car battery, when i come back this morning garage smell like burnt electronics and both the charger and battery are dead took the covers off and it's melted and burnt, i'm not sure what fails first battery or the charger, but i hope my 100Ah is ok. Its very hard to find good tools at a fair price here in europe.
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we are all experiencing the lack of quality on the lower end of the Chinese products. They don't do quality control. I think the higher end stuff is more reliable. As others have said, you were lucky to have not had a fire. many chargers can cook a battery or cause shorts on the charger end and burn up using the battery as the source.
 
pontiac428 said:
I thought oxy/acetylene with a #0 tip and a mellow reducing flame would work, but the first case told me to back off, too hot (it's in the pic).
I got a feel for it real quick, although I will be using propane next time.
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I know some of the 'big guys' prefer a nice soft flame for annealing. As in, it's preferred over induction, etc. It's hard to beat a nice big soft flame for heating a part like that. I'm guessing you're right on with the propane.

Might try spin them in something as you heat them. Not necessarily a lathe, but something to roll them as you heat them. But you probably know that already... :)
 
pontiac428 said:
Today, I tried my hand at annealing brass. I used 750F tempilaq to guide me. I thought oxy/acetylene with a #0 tip and a mellow reducing flame would work, but the first case told me to back off, too hot (it's in the pic). I got a feel for it real quick, although I will be using propane next time. Then I ran it through the sonic disruptor using a Lemishine dishwashing pillow. That worked well. Still have to squeeze them down to .20 cal and thin the necks. They are tumbling now, I decided I wanted the tepillaq stains off. :dunno:

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Dude!! Now you are shaking my tree. This is my process.
 
I might just have to build an annealing machine, there is no substitute for mechanizing the process. As with everything in reloading, volume changes everything. @Eyerelief, did you build that 'un? Do you have plans or prints? I've seen a few different schemes, and the one with the window rollers is my favorite. What type of motor did you use?

Brass has no triple point, so it's technically not annealing, but stress relieving and normalizing the grain structure following work hardening. It's not really changing the molecular structure as much as it is repairing it, cartridge brass is always in the alpha structure (centered cubic) so calling it an anneal is just shooter slang. I went into the shoulders on purpose, since these have been worked through 3 dies so far with one more to go, and the first bang will fire form the last tiny remainder of the shoulder and neck junction.

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Cartridge brass is 30% copper by weight, or one copper for eight zinc atoms. What changes isn't the structure, as steel does, but the grain.

The-effects-of-annealing-temperature-on-the-tensile-strength-and-ductility-of-a-brass.jpg

This shows what's happening with the grain. At 750 F, the work hardened grain is reformed as a ductile grain. This graph does not include time, so I am assuming it is a one hour time constant. I'm doing this for longer case life and an easier time on the bench.


Yes, I looked this stuff up before I got started. I don't believe in voodoo or reading the bones. Shooters are the most superstitious folks out there. The web is full of what and short on why when it comes to this kind of stuff. LIke waving a rabbit's foot over a keg of powder with a different lot number than the last one seems to help a lot of guys shoot better groups.
 
pontiac428 said:
I might just have to build an annealing machine, there is no substitute for mechanizing the process. As with everything in reloading, volume changes everything. @Eyerelief, did you build that 'un? Do you have plans or prints? I've seen a few different schemes, and the one with the window rollers is my favorite. What type of motor did you use?

Brass has no triple point, so it's technically not annealing, but stress relieving and normalizing the grain structure following work hardening. It's not really changing the molecular structure as much as it is repairing it, cartridge brass is always in the alpha structure (centered cubic) so calling it an anneal is just shooter slang. I went into the shoulders on purpose, since these have been worked through 3 dies so far with one more to go, and the first bang will fire form the last tiny remainder of the shoulder and neck junction.

View attachment 462465

Cartridge brass is 30% copper by weight, or one copper for eight zinc atoms. What changes isn't the structure, as steel does, but the grain.

View attachment 462466

This shows what's happening with the grain. At 750 F, the work hardened grain is reformed as a ductile grain. This graph does not include time, so I am assuming it is a one hour time constant. I'm doing this for longer case life and an easier time on the bench.


Yes, I looked this stuff up before I got started. I don't believe in voodoo or reading the bones. Shooters are the most superstitious folks out there. The web is full of what and short on why when it comes to this kind of stuff. LIke waving a rabbit's foot over a keg of powder with a different lot number than the last one seems to help a lot of guys shoot better groups.
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Yes I did build this one many years back. There have been some production units since that I really like but I can’t justify the cost. My favorite being “annealing made perfect”.
I put my own ”spin” if you will on a concept that was floating around the innerweb. All of the builds for these I saw used two motors, one for the feeder and one for the heat soak platten. it took two trim pots to sync the two motors together. i couldn’t understand (and still don’t) why anyone would want to do that. My approach was to use one motor and drive both with small sprockets and link chain I purchased from a robotics shop. This way the two moving parts are inherently in sync. Other than that, it’s a proximity sensor that counts brass as it goes by (green display) a voltage control pot for rpm, red display. The red display is showing a percentage of voltage not tru rpm. The temp can be controlled three ways, by time duration through rpm, by flame intensity, and flame proximity. I use a dab of tempilaq 750 inside the case neck to tell me when I’m close.
I’m traveling till Monday but I’ll dig up what I have when I get back and get you a few pics of the guzinta’s.
 
pontiac428 said:
Yes, I looked this stuff up before I got started. I don't believe in voodoo or reading the bones. Shooters are the most superstitious folks out there. The web is full of what and short on why when it comes to this kind of stuff. LIke waving a rabbit's foot over a keg of powder with a different lot number than the last one seems to help a lot of guys shoot better groups.
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Boy! Leave it to my wife to put my secrets on facebooger. Now everyone will be ”shooting one hole groups all day if I do my part” (Love reading that online). And who can afford a keg of powder these days?
She probably also posted that I stand on one foot (left foot before the southern hemisphere summer solstice, right foot after Groundhog Day). BUT! None of this works without a fresh dent in my head from her frying pan when she sees what I dropped on a keg of H4350. YMMV
 
woodchucker said:
we are all experiencing the lack of quality on the lower end of the Chinese products. They don't do quality control. I think the higher end stuff is more reliable. As others have said, you were lucky to have not had a fire. many chargers can cook a battery or cause shorts on the charger end and burn up using the battery as the source.
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Well, that battery is now also bad, it seems to have a bad cell it has 8,4v and won't charge up just maxes out any charger, not sure what came first bad battery or bad charger (chicken or the egg). That battery is fresh out of warranty, maybe a week. It's predecessor failed a week after buying it and took me a month for going every day and arguing to get it replace, car batteries seem to fail often and the stores that sell them intensenaly make it hard to get them replaced in hope you will give up and buy a new one. I've heard it's not the same in the US, many of the people that live there can't believe that the stores here can do that kind of business.
 
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