[Th3BadWolf] decided to undertake a casting foundry project of epic proportions. The hardest part of the build is obviously the apparatus for melting the metal. It needs a vessel that can stand up to the heat, and a heating method that has enough thermal power to melt metal. He’s just finished the burner portion of the build. His writeup includes information about the cement casting that finishes up the vessel on which he had already done a lot of work.
You’ll remember that for the enclosure he started with an oil drum and lined it with a ceramic blanket. That was lined with fire brick. In this update he finish it off by placing a smaller barrel inside to act as an inner form, then filled the remaining gap with 3000 degree cement.
The burner injects air, propane, and oil which are all driven by a blower and forced through a nozzle into the chamber. You can catch a quick blower and burner test clip after the break. We can’t wait to see the next post, which we assume will be a test run of the final assembly.
As if it ain’t hot enough! Flame seems turbulant not jet-like?
Bit of a terminology problem with the video. He isn’t smelting which is the process of obtaining the metal from ore, which for aluminum is not an easy or home brew kind of project.
Interesting to see how he handles 45 pounds of molten aluminum… If he lets it harden in the furnace, it will likely not fire again.
Turbulent flame is actually what you want to heat up the contents of the furnace. Nicely done.
He’ll probably pour the aluminum into ingots after scraping the dross off. I made an ingot mold from a cheap muffin tin, and buried some soda cans in sand after cutting out the tops.
The biggest pour I ever had was a half-gallon cast iron pot full of aluminum, that I had melted in a brush fire using a vacuum cleaner and steel pipe as an oxygen lance.
Not safe. At all. But totally bitchin’!
Straight propane will melt aluminum. I’ve melted down hard drives in my propane forge.
At the risk of sounding like an idiot why this burner design? Why not a simple gas burner? Or more than one burner if that more heat is needed. A simple properly designed propane burner can have an output of 500,000 BTU http://www.flameengineering.com/Heavy_Duty_Vapor_Kits.html gives the flame expects to see, the flame we see indicates a air/fuel mixture that isn’t correct and may be wasting fuel, and not hot enough to melt aluminum.
Answer is simple,it’s a burner designed to burn used motor oil,which is seen as recycling here and in most states if the combustion is complete. As for the incomplete burnt propane, it’s not a big deal since it’s only to start it up (2-3 min run time). Also,if you got a big crane shop around or anything similar, premium blend of used engine oil can be had for less than nothing,they have to pay to get rid of it.
No fuel cost and unlimited supply.
Hope it answered your questions.
Looks alot like the furnace that the svseeker guys built. suspiciously so…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f10hqYGIJCE <part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQWG3r6_-YY <part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-A8uoWdBB8 <burner detail
I’ve been in email contact with svseeker’s people, got advice from them and so on. Getting as much info as possible is the most important thing. Also,note that his refractory casting is behind the bricks and mine is in front on the hot-face,it has major consequences depending on the stuff you use.