General Categories > Non Gun Stuff
Aluminum melting
unfy:
Sooooooo
I've got a garbage can full of root beer, pepsi, etc cans. I had talked about the electric furnace a few times before... but that's kind of on hold due to situations etc. I still wanna do things with it, but the full can is taking up too much room, maybe if I made some quick ingots...
Decided to go ahead and "build" this: (punching holes in coffee cans dont count as building...)
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-foundry-and-sand-cast-aluminum/
Built as described (see first pic).
Went through a bunch of cans, and I know cans aint much... but was starting to get a little more than curious / worried ... especially when the entire "crucible" (read: bean can) seemed to be filled with nothing but dross.
Took it apart and I found where all the aluminum went (see next two pics).
So, for a first attempt, I'd be willing to call it a 'partial success'.
I'll try again - with either not pressing down on the cats cans at all, or possibly using a 2" diameter black nipple as the crucible.
edited for typo
shooter:
how many cans did you melt? and ounces of good aluminum?
I thought about using broken up transmissions?
unfy:
How many cans ? No clue. This was a first run and just trying to actually pour an ingot.
Didn't get there.
I have bean can (ok, soup can, whatever) that has probably a half inch or so of aluminum in the bottom of it, and then I have all that seeped out into the bottom of the air chamber coffee can. I'll.... take a look at getting the aluminum out of the bottom of the coffee can in a bit since there's some questions.
Here's a fella that does a 55 gallon bag of crushed cans:
He guesses at the end 50/50. There are complaints in the comments, as expected. The top comment suggests about a 30% loss instead.
This guy has a much larger setup, he melted the head of a car in a relatively short amount of time (25-30min?).
It was interesting to do my first melt of something other than lead. I'm sad that it didn't go as planned but it was still a learning experience.
A 2 inch diameter nipple doesn't really seem like an ideal crucible. But the idea that it came from was this video:
Which seems to be a great video IMHO (and I have all the materials to build one of those if I wanted heh).
Anyway, 2" diameter means I'll have to fold each can as i put it into the crucible. It also means that muffin tin ingots are out of the question.
I've got a Lee ingot mold for lead, I'll check if it's steel or not. I'll also grab some 1-1/2 or something PVC to make some positives to push into sand (barring terminology).
I will LOL for a moment - the stuff in the bottom of the air chamber coffee can is so silly light when used to working with lead :).
unfy:
Here's a couple more pics of the inside of the coffee can (below).
Seems to fluctuate a bit from 'none' to an inch and a quarter. If I had to guess at average thickness, 3/4" or maybe 5/8". It's a fair amount of fairly clean looking aluminum, which makes sense if it was leaking out of the bottom or side of the crucible.
I tried to gently hammer it out, but didn't have much luck without damaging the chamber too much. Looks like I'll have to destroy the chamber to get it out :(. I sadly don't have spare coffee cans lying around... and the 2 cans I used in this video were bought new (with coffee sitting in some bags in kitchen). Guess I'll be buying yet MORE cheap coffee, sigh.
Oh! Annnnd be aware - beer / soda cans aren't "just aluminum", they're an alloy. Wiki says 92-97% aluminum.
unfy:
I guess it wouldn't be an unfy post without some talk about safety.
Don't use anything galvanized when working with melting aluminum. You'll burn off the galvanization (zinc) which produces nasty fumes that will kill you.
This means no plated sheet metal, no plated hardware, don't use air ducting, anything that says the word zinc, etc.
Coffee cans yes. Paint cans yes. Food cans yes. Things that are 'weldable' yes. Things that are 'stainless' yes.
I picked up the $40 respirator / air filter thing from hardware store. Go ahead and buy the nicer ones that can block laquer and other things like that. You ARE spending money for your own health here. And I will gladly say that there was a huge difference in the smell of things etc after I took my mask off when investigating what was going on :) (so yes, it was doing its job wonderfully). Also, it's nice to not get a lung full of hot air when the wind shifts or you're over the furnace.
Although I didn't feel it was fully necessary, I was wearing a welder's / leather bib.
As mentioned in the "instructable", don't stick your hot tongs down into the charcoal bag to grab another briquette to put into the fire chamber. Them tongs are real hot and might ignite something. I dumped out a bunch of briquettes onto the ground and just picked them up from there. Was also easier instead of fumbling with them inside the bag (and means you didn't have possibly wet tongs near molten metal too).
All of my cans are dry but do be aware of the tinsel fairy and try to avoid it.
Although I had no spills, and such - the leaking crucible did mean I put a burnt circle in the grass. This was unexpected and unfortunate. Be aware and careful!
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version