General Categories > Non Gun Stuff
Electric Shop Furnace Build (melting aluminum)
unfy:
--- Quote from: Phantom on January 30, 2014, 03:03:32 PM ---Unfy
What are you doing for Air filtering or Venting in case of toxic or dangerous off gassing ?
--- End quote ---
Thanks for mentioning this for folks. I was intending this to be just a 'build' thread for the furnace, but sure a bit of safety is a good idea :D.
This will never be used indoors. It'll always be used outdoors.
But yes - you really want good ventilation. While aluminum in of itself is harmless - if you're melting scrap or creating zamack / pot metal / aluminum-zinc alloy - you really must have proper ventilation. Zinc / zinc fumes is toxic. And depending on what you're doing - you'll want to make an aluminum-zinc alloy due to it's increased strength.
I'm currently facing huge dilemmas concerning how to cut the firebrick. I really don't wanna do it indoors here at work due to the mess, but I really don't feel like buying a table saw. The $45 tablesaw on CL aint quite what I want, asking owner of the $75 one.
The $129 cheapie menards table saws don't have long arbors on them, can't mount 3 blades on them at a time (to get to 3/8" cutting width).
My cheapy angle grinder has left/right threaded holes for the additional hand grip. I can use those to make something for mounting. But I'd rather not. And that'd still be just 1/8th inch blade-cuts at a time.
I can make some stuff so that I can go about using circular saw (I don't trust myself with circular saws, so i picked up another piece of 24x24 OSB to use as a platform to make guides etc). Still just 1/8th inch cuts at a time, meaning 2-3 passes per groove.
edit:
Yeah, i'll just break down and use the table saw here at work. At least I will assuming I've got blades for it. It's 10" blades, 3 ish max depth at 90deg. I know the blades i brought with me are only 7", but I'm pretty sure I've got some bigger blades at home. Yay for them being on sale months ago at Bargain Mart Tools on 84th (Papillion).
I'll be making fence/jig stuff tonight.
And oh look, I get to go to Menards for a THIRD time today. Forgot spade connectors for the range control ._.
unfy:
Cat attacked me last night. Refused to get out of lap.
This morning, got initial plans done for fence/jig for brick grooving. I'll be making stupid stuff out of wood tonight heh.
The other masonry blades I've got are 9" - so all is well.
Brick grooving will have to wait until late tonight or sometime tomorrow (didn't bring shopvac for extra dust control, oops)
Got some 10-24 4" stainless screws from Fastenal, and a bunch of 10-24 stainless washers/nuts from Westlake/Ace. The 10-24 all thread rods are cheaper but wasn't in stock and I'm an impatient guy at the moment heh.
I'm just not feeling comfortable with how big the 1/4" stuff (washers/nuts in particular) was going to be. After the grooves are cut I can eyeball the 1/4" to see if it'd work. 1/4" is easier to come by than 10-24.
Talking to Tomasek about constructing a crucible out of steel for the furnace. I guess I should also just bug folks here ?
Basically, I need a pipe 4-5" in diameter (preferably 4.5 or 5.0) and 8" tall. Then some ears on top of it with some holes for grabbing it. And a plate welded to the bottom. Made out of steel, I've heard schedule 40 does well.
edit: I'm beat tonight. Don't think I'll actually do any work on stuff and instead just go to bed early. Groggy + power tools makes for bad !!! SCIENCE !!!
As per the PC oven thread - I'm grabbing a dryer tomorrow. I really do think the motor will be 110. Gas dryers use 110 for control and motors, so there's some sense in electric ones to use 110 for some stuff and 220 for high heat. Anyhoo - assuming the motor is 110, a ball mill / tumbler will be in order. Basically need to crush cheap no name kitty litter into fine clay for greensand. Haven't decided what to use as the 'ball' / 'balls' part. Supposedly some kind of huge ball bearing is the intention. I suppose some large rocks would work too... I dunno. Some fear of them breaking ? *shrug* whatever - deal with it later.
unfy:
Got the straight grooves cut in 5 of the firebricks.
Used this to keep things aligned / a hold of safely / dust control.
The cute thing about it is, I sized it for a tractor supply company brick. Then added about 1/8th of an inch just in case bricks were different size. Get to menards bricks - and that 1/8th wasn't enough. Had to sand it down some to get'em to fix - and for the TSC brick, had to use some felt to keep it held true.
The picture is of it 'upside down', normally the brick would be facing down with the wood covering it.
I used felt to avoid scratching up the top of the table saw.
The first groove cut. It works. Yay!
Something went wrong during this cut. This was in the TSC brick that was just a bit shorter than the menards bricks - so it quite possibly got just a hair catty cornered. Or maybe it hit a hard spot. Or the blades got too hot or something. It took *forever* to make the cut - and as you can see it was melting either the brick or the blade material.
When I started the next cut after letting things cool for 15min - it got about 1/2 inch in and started doing it again. Stopped, unplugged saw, changed the order of the blades, viola - back to smooth cutting.
The straight groove bricks (5 of them, 5 grooves each) have been cut. Yay!
Sadly, when I started to inspect the burnt brick above - I noticed that I had somehow munged the measurements. Which is really weird. I was checking each measurement 3 times tonight. Anyhoo, it caused me to need to change the other cuts just a bit.
This means that when it comes time to do the terminal brick (to connect all the grooves into a spiral) - I'll have to change the push block i've made for each and every of the 5 primary cuts on it (angles are all different). Kind of a pain in the ass :(.
It took about 4 hours to cut those 25 grooves. A large chunk of that was trying to sand down the jig thing and dealing with the burnt brick situation.
Tomorrow:
* need to bevel the groove side long wise of each of the 5 straight bricks (fast to do)
* need to also bevel the terminal brick
* figure out the lines for getting the spiral connections in the terminal brick (gonna measure not 3 times tomorrow, but 4(!@%$(!@%)!@%)
* groove out the spiral connections in the terminal brick
* groove out the two straight half/partial grooves of the terminal brick (one for each end of the element) ... this will be weird i feel.
* drill press the terminal holes in the terminal brick
* get the terminal holes drilled in the sheet metal shell (gotta carefully align stuff)
After all of that - in general terms, it'll be getting the element and terminals in place as well as the rest of the electronics... then mixing the refactory cement and ramming up the pieces. From there... it'll be the week to dry out the refactory and a day to do initial firing.
I'm thinking that week of waiting while it dries out would be a great time to start taking apart the dryer for powder coat oven stuff as well as ball mill (for greensand) thoughts with it's motor (and/or drum) etc.
unfy:
As noted in another thread I'll be moving to a place that has more limitations on what I can and can't do and stuff.
I'll still be building and finishing this furnace, it's just that all of it will now need to be done at work.
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