exoray
Master Member
New Hobby...
Well last year our foundry furnace met an uncertain death as we pushed it to it's limits seeing if we could get cast iron to melt... It was a limited success as we got the cast iron to melt but also literally melted the furnace in the process, it collapsed upon itself and the crucible was floating in a pool of lava...
So on to bigger and better, this is made with uber high heat specialized foundry cement $100 bucks a bag rated in excess of 3000 °F...
Anyway this is the initial test run, this was about 7 pounds of copper, melting temp of 1984 °F this is only a few hundred below cast iron at about 2100 °F... It didn't even phase the furnace, it was cool to the touch on the outside, well not the lid but the sides anyway were cool to the touch...
Video sucks as it was a cell phone video, but hey it was last minute...
The end results are here, the unfinished castings resulted in about 9 inches of 1.75" diameter stock, the bottom one is turned down and trued up to just over 1.5" perfect for what we were aiming for...
Video: http://rpf.exoray.com/melting metal.flv
End result should be some Ghostbusters Backpack Ion Knobs machined in copper... I'll post pictures in a few days/weeks when I get back the final product from the machinist, way too complicated of part for me to machine reliably
Well last year our foundry furnace met an uncertain death as we pushed it to it's limits seeing if we could get cast iron to melt... It was a limited success as we got the cast iron to melt but also literally melted the furnace in the process, it collapsed upon itself and the crucible was floating in a pool of lava...
So on to bigger and better, this is made with uber high heat specialized foundry cement $100 bucks a bag rated in excess of 3000 °F...
Anyway this is the initial test run, this was about 7 pounds of copper, melting temp of 1984 °F this is only a few hundred below cast iron at about 2100 °F... It didn't even phase the furnace, it was cool to the touch on the outside, well not the lid but the sides anyway were cool to the touch...
Video sucks as it was a cell phone video, but hey it was last minute...
The end results are here, the unfinished castings resulted in about 9 inches of 1.75" diameter stock, the bottom one is turned down and trued up to just over 1.5" perfect for what we were aiming for...
Video: http://rpf.exoray.com/melting metal.flv
End result should be some Ghostbusters Backpack Ion Knobs machined in copper... I'll post pictures in a few days/weeks when I get back the final product from the machinist, way too complicated of part for me to machine reliably
