Board got wiped, burnt crucible edition
Dead Thread: https://warosu.org/diy/thread/2829738Previous Thread: https://warosu.org/diy/thread/2785924
>>2841928Anyone here use induction heaters? I made one that can melt aluminum pretty effortlessly, but can't quite make it with copper yet. I think some better insulation will be enough to make it work. Also, I expect that switching to a steel crucible would reach higher temperatures than the graphite one I'm using now.
>>2841928I reccomend making carbon foam for your insulation shits light weight than most materials wrap a loaf of bread in tinfoil and chuck it into a wood fire in a few hours should have a pyrolysis loaf of bread aka carbon foam with a smooth skinupgrade your insulation to the space age.
>>2842050>Flammable non-refractory insulationNo.
>>2841928going to ask a power-hammer/forging question, hopefully people here might have used onei want to try DIY drop-forging, using some dies i have the capacity to mill. it wouldn't be fully closed-die forging, the dies wouldn't 100% meet and would allow flashing to be pushed out the sides. do common power hammers (the Little Giants of 25, 50, 100 pound hammer weights, and the homemade tire/treadle hammers) have the x-y repeatability to do this semi-closed die forging? my understanding of the difference between drop hammers and power hammers is that the former is mostly closed die, the latter open die, and open die inherently needs less repeatability on where the top die hits the bottom die. the LG hammers also have a very short vertical guide for the hammer to follow, whereas drop hammers have very long guides. this seems like it would lead to less accuracy on the LG power hammers than on a dedicated drop hammer. do i need to build my own shitty drop hammer or will a power hammer do?
>>2841999Can i see picture
I've been strapped for time and it's been raining too much, but there's plenty happening behind the scenes. Today, taking a break from bigger projects, I'm melting another load of shell casings. Reloaders shut your fucking mouths, I rake these out of the desert.
Broke one of my 3D printed barb fittings and had to replace it on-the-fly with piece of 3/16" brake line. Lost several drops of oil into the pan of catching, very stressful.
I like being able to see the color while pouring.
Lovely.
how come casting on machines made 100 years ago look much cleaner and polished than made by random people today
>>2845320>how come casting machines used by commercial foundries look much cleaner than setups made by hobbyists and amateurs?
>>2845387not talking about casting machines you moron
>>2845320>casting on machines>>2845417>not talking about casting machinesWhatever you say, kid. Commercial/Professional castings are much more refined than amateur ones. If that's surprising, you can't be helped.
Lovely, let's melt it.
This should be fun.
It worked, neat.
Thinking about getting into silver and gold sand casting. How and where should I start? Just want to make small knick knacks and things right now. Nothing larger than pendant size
>>2847894what do you plan to do with it?
>>2850342I want to turn it into a 12" brass drift. First attempt came out too porous, it cooled rapidly as it went down the tube, never even reached the bottom ~2" or so. I'll have pics soon.
>>2841928is it expensive to set up a backyard foundry from scratch?
>>2852178Nope. Depends what you want to do of course, but getting started is neither difficult or expensive, it's very accessible. The Chinese are especially making it easy any more with their kits, which aren't very good, but are very cheap and easy to get started with.
Just picked up a sheet of XPS foam and some drywall joint compound, let's see if I can accomplish anything really stupid today.
>>2854176its not stupid if it works.
>>2847894Ain't it glorious?
>>2856865Let's look inside. Cut halfway, tore the rest off with a sledge, it was challenging. Pretty, though.
>>2856867Nifty. Thanks for the update. It still freaks me out but I enjoy your pics and video.
Amazon -> "Rotary Tool" -> Same Day Delivery -> Sort By Lowest PriceSpent nearly 5 minutes designing a mount for it, this old CR-10 clone already has a simple toolchanger on it so that makes it easy. Used double sided tape to hold down a 1ft square chunk of plywood, drilled and counterbored holes so it could be mounted to the bed, bed springs replaced with solid ABS spacers. Ended up doing this to a second piece of ply and layering them, because I had an extra and didn't want to store it. Used lots of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V to put together a post-processor for Fusion360. Now, let's be clear, putting a cheapshit not-Dremel on a 3D Printer makes for a terrible CNC machine. It's got 6mm wide belts and rubber wheels running in aluminum extrusions, it's a fucking terrible CNC machine. It's not rigid, which makes it pretty much worthless as a CNC.
>>2856891Handles foam just fine though.
>>2856894So you cut something out of foam, slather it in drywall joint compound, and bury it in sand. Easy enough.
>>2856895Not bad for a first attempt, one half came out perfect, the other not so much. This is fun.
Well shit, that one didn't work. I'll try it a little differently in the coming days.
>>2857875Seems like the foam is burning and belching up a bubble of gas. I think the memesters doing foam casting are casting small shit. Could try burning it out before you cast. Get like three layers of refractory on it then fire it slowly
>>2857888>I think the memesters doing foam casting are casting small shit.Kekhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBB8O_uUtbs
>>2857888Lost foam casting is it's own thing, it's quite different than investment casting. You don't burn it out, don't build up thick refractory on it, that's just investment casting. The coating is very thin, it prevents sand from sticking and helps with surface finish. It needs to be thin so it can vent, lost-foam casts vent through that coating straight into the sand. The foam controls the flow. It doesn't just burn, it melts, then turns to gas that's pushed out through the sand. That gas is flammable, which is why you get that little puff of flame at the beginning of a pour. Lost foam casting kind of sucks for small stuff, even with lots of head pressure it struggles with thin cross-sections I can pull off consistently in greensand. It's great for big shit, it's been widely used for making engine blocks, cylinder heads, crankshafts, differential cases and carriers, transmission cases, pistons, connecting rods, intake manifolds, exhaust manifolds, all sorts of shit. No draft, no vents/risers, no cores, no parting lines, great surface finish, no sand stuck to the casting to fuck with tools, cheaper than investment casting with a quicker turnaround time.
>>2857875Here they are all cleaned up on the belt sander.
>>2858106They fit just like the original ones did. They were steel, but had been cut off by a previous owner because the hardware rusted in place. Fucking retard cut the unobtainable bespoke brackets in half instead of lopping off the bolt heads. Top was held on by a ratchet strap when I bought it. I'm just glad he still had the (cut, ruined) brackets in the glove box for me to measure up. I've been running some 3D printed plastic ones for awhile, they get the job done but I've broken one bouncing around off-road before. These aluminum ones should handle the abuse a lot better. OEM Toyota parts have become aftermarket Suzuki parts, I'm very happy with that.
Ouch, tough break.
Needed something taller for pouring a 1"x16" brass rod, so I shoved a piece of a 8" duct into the sand. Call it an experiment, I call it fucking around.
Wear your protective gear, fellow kids. This wasn't totally unexpected. With lost foam casting, all your venting happens through the coating out into the sand, you don't add separate vents. This is brass, it's dense, heavy stuff, makes a lot of head pressure. Because of that, it can push out past the coating into the sand, ruining the casting. I added several layers of drywall joint compound coating to this foam rod to try to keep the brass from pushing through, but it was too thick to vent properly. So those gases just went back up and through the molten metal as bubbles, scattering the molten brass. It was fun!
Not exactly the desired result. My next attempt will be going back to 1 or 2 thin coats of joint compound, and angling the whole setup to keep the head pressure down. I'll have to do some fuckery to see how much angle I can get, but every bit helps. A 45° angle takes that 16" of head down to 11.6", a full 60° takes that down to only 8".
>>2858113way cool man
only slightly related to foundry stuff:why are modern "blacksmiths" such money-grubbing used car salesmen? you can get welding equipment, machining equipment, heat treating equipment, etc etc. all day for ridiculously good prices. so good that all of the above can be hobby-tier without needing to rub two sticks together, like you can use actual good equipment.but for blacksmithing, the boomers that own the equipment (power hammers, forges, anvils, etc.) think that this dead trade is still a workable business, so they sell clapped out garbage from 1910 at way above MSRP prices. There are probably a handful of actual blacksmith businesses in this country compared to any other type of small business. it's a dead trade that can only sell to millionaires because 110% of all hot-worked steel processes have moved to china. it's even deader than machining is in the US, yet they treat it like anyone who buys from them is going to be Rockefeller 2.0. Why the disconnect? Honestly the "hobby" deserves the death it is currently embracing
>>2842472if you want accuracy and repeatability and want to DIY it yourself, why not a fly press or hydraulic press?
I'm officially out of foam. Next week should be spicy.
>>2860838you can always build your own triphammer, just saying, its nothing as complex or precise as a lathe, and will probably be cheaper and give you more valuable experience in welding/fab.
>>2858113One of the coolest things I’ve seen on here. Nice work. I might have missed it, but did you model the bracket yourself or was there a file out there that you found?
>>2864320Thanks, anon. I designed them awhile back using the cut up originals as a reference.
>>2856867Looks porous
>>2864752Did you forget what the outside looked like? >>2856865I was actually impressed at how solid it turned out lol but yes, it was porous. I expected large inclusions, thought I'd snap it in half with a good hammer. Instead I had to cut halfway through and take several swings with a 12lb sledge, I was certainly surprised by it. All that stretch from hammering it apart fluffed out the grain structure, really neat lookin'.Bonus toe-pic for the foot fetishists.
How hard would it be to cast these joystick parts with good accuracy by going 3d print -> silicone mold -> wax -> bronze casting?
>>2864761Not difficult. Lost wax is the right approach, given the jewelry-tier size and detail I'd say it may require vacuum or centrifugal casting. Really not difficult, but there's a big barrier to entry if you're not already equipped for it. With a resin printer you can skip the silicone and wax, there are resins sold specifically to be burned out for investment casting. They're pricey, but it's well worth it over the alternative, makes great complexity and repeatability pretty trivial. So you need casting resin and a decent resin printer, a good kiln with the right controls for burnouts, a furnace for melting the metal, crucible, tongs, gloves, respirator, investment plaster, a vacuum casting table, flasks, and plenty of things I'm not thinking of. I don't mean that to sound discouraging, desktop-sized electric kilns and furnaces are coming out of China for dirt cheap, and come in kits with shit like crucibles and tongs. Building these things yourself is easy with readily available materials and parts if you're feeling the DIY, there are countless examples online for inspiration. You don't need a fancy or expensive resin printer to pull this off, pretty much any common resin printer will do just fine. A vacuum casting table is surprisingly expensive, even from China, but plenty of people build their own for a small fraction of the price. This whole thing is very doable and really not terribly difficult, but there's a lot to it if you're starting from nothing, and the costs can really add up.Check Youtube for VogMan and Paul's Garage, they've both done quite a lot of this.So is someone selling brass N64 joystick gears or was that some nerd showing off their project?
>>2864779Yeah I was looking into resin printers beforehand. I want to get into casting for jewelry and such and I though this would be a decent project to try my hand at. Seems like the kiln is by far the biggest investment, with everything else being not too bad price wise (if you DIY the vacuum table).Anyways, yeah a few different people made these things I believe. TaoStyx64 sold them for a bit but I'm not sure what's happening with that. The page just asks for a password now.Bottom line is there's no reliable source for metal n64 joystick parts at this time, despite several prospects coming and going at random.
I want to melt down some old gas regulators, any tips the usual guides don't mention before I get going?There is no residue or anything, just metal and maybe some paint.
>>2864923Nothing really, be safe and have fun, take pics, etc.
Been a minute since I've done anycasting. Anyone here have experience with using Polycast? I've got a more complex project for a larger scale cast than what my greensand can cover, I figured it might be worth a shot.I would be printing in segments, use alignment pins + a soldering iron to weld the sections together, and likely would resort to layers of drywall compound + sand for the shell.I hope a large convection oven will be fine for burn out, especially since the wax form will be mostly hollow.
Just found out that that manganese I purchased for making alloys is a neurotoxin. fun.
>>2843488Isn't there a chance of that stone exploding if he spills it because it'll flash boil all of the water in the stone and send shrapnel and molten metal everywhere?Someone should probably tell him
>>2848541Give it back jamal
>>2847886Is that a jet engine running on waste oil mounted to a stolen shopping cart
>>2869637Maybe
>>2856867>>2864755Fucking macro photography I'm sitting here trying to figure out what this even is for like 3 minutes while fucked upI thought it was bread or molded, but it looked the size of a fire hydrant lmao
>>2858113>>2864393Very nice anonWhat did you cast it from, old cans?
>>2869639Is it a jet engine though or am I retardedIt might just be a fucking diesel heater
>>2869640I feel accomplished as a photographer now.>>2869642Thanks, anon. Toyota Intake Manifold https://warosu.org/diy/thread/2785924#p2810956>>2869643It's an oil burning foundry furnace, I think it probably does meet the simplest definition of a jet engine. It compresses air into a hot chamber where it's spraying fuel and produces expanding hot gas at the outlet. It's currently limited most by the low static pressure of the intake blower fan. Yeah I think it is a shitty jet engine. Pretty decent foundry furnace.
>>2869645Is this jet a common thing?Where's the designs?
>>2869651Very common, just search for waste oil burners on Youtube. Here's an old Aussie who made several, some of which are very similar to mine and fundamentally the same in function. https://www.youtube.com/@glumpy10/videos Gravity-fed ones simpler than mine are very common. Ones that use compressed air to aerosolize the waste oil are also popular, but are more susceptible to clogging and more sensitive to fuel quality, while I burn a hearty mix of goopy flammable trash.
>>2869654ThanksSo what kind do you have?
>>2869654And how does it smell? Surely this isn't safe to be around
>>2869658>>2869659I have a bilge blower fan and use a peristaltic pump to supply fuel. It's exactly like this except much larger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5_fHyqVrw&t=1181s It burns quite cleanly when it's hot, but it's easy to fuck up and make fat clouds of noxious smoke. The smell is milder than diesel exhaust, but there's no chance it's safe to breath given the random mix of disgusting shit I burn. I use a respirator when I run this thing.
Just for fun, from the first thread I think.
Everything's terrible. Several castings lined up for this coming week, hold your breath if you're feeling lucky.
I watch concrete casting and they use a vibrator to remove air bubbles, the foam makes air bubbles I wonder if the air is being compressed while expanding with heat.
>>2872353what
>>2872353I think molten metal flows better than concrete,t. worked in precast for six months
I am gearing up to try casting some parts this winter out of cast iron. I know my furnace can hit cast iron temps, although I've not managed to get thing quite hot enough for it to flow well, its more the consistency of a runny pudding.Any tips?
>>2874525uhhhhh more heat
Need to build myself a sand muller + heater for the winter. I was thinking of getting a 55 gallon drum and using one of the many decommissioned cordless drill motors I have on hand to drive some sort of sifter. Does anyone here have experience with something of the sort?
>>2876588I've seen plenty of Youtubers put together sand mullers, starting from a 55 gallon drum seems common enough. Some also use concrete mixers, they're easy to find and have plenty of torque for the job. I just did the laziest possible muller and tossed a few dozen pounds of iron milling/grinding balls into a cement mixer and called it good. It does the job, but it's definitely not a "real" muller and requires a little more time and effort to use. Consider taking a look at Mark Presling's Kooka Muller on Youtube, it's not necessarily the best design but his videos are a really good look at the how and why of a muller and could be good for informing your own design. Lundgren Bronze Studios on Youtube has a video on putting one together from a cement mixer, it's a really good look at someone trying to build a sand muller in a format that's common for hobbyists, and getting a usable though certainly not great result.
