Gateway To Metal Casting

Casting is an exciting and very useful pastime, but it’s not exactly common these days. That’s a problem whether you’re just getting started or have been doing it for years: everyone can use the advice of another. Fear not! The US Department of Energy is here to help with the Industrial Metal’s Program’s Metal Casting cornucopia.

Although not strictly a hack, this is certainly a facilitator of hacks and any experienced user would do themselves some good by perusing the site. Click on the maps to find complex issues presented remarkably well for papers at this level of rigor. Seriously, check them out.

However, since these papers go into such depth, we can’t really say the material is beginner friendly. That’s not to say it would be bad for a newbie to read through, just that it might be a bit discouraging. But, if you need to figure out where to start in the maze of molds and sand and molten metal, we might have some articles that might help you out.

Do y’all know of any good casting resources on the interwebs? If so, leave ’em in the comments!

Thanks [RunnerPack] for sending this in.

15 thoughts on “Gateway To Metal Casting

  1. You probably already know this, but there is an awesome book series by David Gingery on building your own machine shop from scratch. The first one deals with metal casting, and is called “The Charcoal Foundry”. I would highly recommend it.

  2. “Do y’all know of any good casting resources on the interwebs?” Well, not on the web per se, but, Dave Gingery’s series on casting a home shop is a great start.

  3. Steve Chastain has written a number of good books.

    http://stephenchastain.com/store/

    Lindsay Books used to reprint a US Navy foundry manual which other publishers seems to have picked up now that Lindsay is no more. There were a slew of good books that Lindsay reprinted, but availability my be a problem.
    a
    Ammen’s TAB books are also good.

    1. Probably the best site I’ve come across. Gingery and Chastain are nice for the tables and calculations but Backyard metal casting is much better for examples of work and how to build a foundry.

  4. I once found a very good place about designing molds, all kinds of things you need to take think when designing an object for casting. I can’t remember the link though. I’m sure i have it somewhere in my bookmarks.

  5. That got their attention, now to talk to them about the ideas behind it such as pressure, mass and velocity. :-) As for the maths, well that depends on their age but mentioning that you need maths to make rockets is a good motivator.

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