Two-thirds of a casting foundry

[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 … Read the rest

Building a foundry in your backyard

[th3BadWolf] has been wanting to build a foundry for some time now. Done right, it’s a very neat tool; it’s fairly easy to do aluminum castings, and if you’re clever enough a foundry can lead to building large machine tools such as a lathe or a mill. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, so [BadWolf] is designing his foundry to … Read the rest

Iron casting in the parking lot

Here’s one good thing about the bitter cold Midwestern winter, it helps keep you from overheating when working around a hot furnace. Back in February this iron pour happened in the parking lot of the Madison, Wisconsin based Sector67 Hackerspace. Look, they’re making iron hearts!

Now this isn’t just a bunch of members who got together and decided to do … Read the rest

Build an induction heater and become a metalsmith

If you’ve ever wanted to forge, cast, or smelt metal, this project is right up your alley. It’s a 30 kVA induction heater built by [bwang] over on Instructables. It gets hot enough to melt and forge steel, iron, and aluminum.

An induction heater operates by surrounding the object to be heated with a coil carrying high frequency AC current. … Read the rest

Smelting metal in your microwave oven

Grab some scrap metal and a microwave oven and you’ll be casting your own metal parts in no time. [Mikeasaurus], who is known for doing strange things like making Silly Putty magnetic or building his own spray paint bottles, doesn’t disappoint this time around. He read about microwave smelting in Popular Science and is giving it a shot himself.… Read the rest