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Aluminum melting

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shooter:
 if you need a thicker pot, come on out, we can dig thu the iron pile and find you something, maybe a piece 1/4 inch thick?

unfy:
Here's the furnace after all was said and done and cooled.

Quite cracked / spider webbed - as I expected.  It looks fairly decent (compared to my expectations) - although the section above the air inlet hole is questionable.

Also shown is the lid.

Lid has some cracks, makes me a bit uneasy, but it seems to be "okay".

As an aside, both the furnace and the lid lost a lot of weight (i'll assume the water cook off).

unfy:
Sadly, I've got six pics of the crucible, so this will require two posts.

Anyway, hit it with a brass brush afterwards to clean it up a bit to more easily spot stuff.

I think there were multiple failures.

First pic shows one of the the larger in size failure.

Second one shows the other one.

Third pic is the bottom.  I dunno if the bottom actually failed or not.  Sure, you see a bright spot - but the crucible was most likely floating on top of molten aluminum in the furnace.  There was also some stuck to some sheet metal I had placed the crucible on after recovering it.

The fourth pick shows the inside.  I have thrown a few other scrap bits of slag / spare aluminum in it.  The shiny piece towards the middle standing up tall is what was in the side of the crucible after a pour (and I pulled away from the wall after things had cooled).

Top of the crucible looks great.  Seam of the pipe looks great, too.

unfy:
Last two.

In the first pic, I have an arrow pointing to a blob.  I'm not sure if it's a weld failure or not.  I'll need to do some stronger brushing and stuff tomorrow.

Second pic is to kinda show both know failures and to also point out that they're about 90 deg out from the lifting holes.  I'll also remind you that one of the lifting holes goes through the pipe seam... so it's related to that.

Anyway... to my point, kinda.

I would have my _| |_ looking rod thing for lifting the crucible.  Works fine, I think I wanna add some extra bends in the rod to aid in pouring (more in that in a bit).  But in order to tilt the crucible, I've been kinda grabbing it with the grill tongs to lift the ass end.

Maybe I'm squeezing (too hard) on the tongs as I try to lift the ass end of the crucible ?

Maybe the saw tooth teeth of the tongs is cutting into the crucible ?

I put a conscious effort into not squeezing the crucible as I try to do the pour, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I do get a bit rushed / feel the heat.

unfy:

--- Quote from: shooter on September 26, 2015, 06:29:58 PM --- if you need a thicker pot, come on out, we can dig thu the iron pile and find you something, maybe a piece 1/4 inch thick?

--- End quote ---

See, that kind of offer is hard to turn down.

I will definitely keep it in mind and will most likely take you up on it heh.

Out of curiosity, are ya gonna make it to the Gretna breakfast, shooter ?


Oh yeah, I did burn through probably 12-14 pounds of charcoal today (in 4 melts).

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