The Home Machinist!

I recently found a product called HydroPerm made by USP. It's a type of plaster that is supposed to stand up to the temperatures of casting non-ferrous materials and it sets using water. I definately plan to include that in my experiments. It may be possible to use sodium silicate with an aromatic e...

First let me say "never stop telling me stuff". If you are telling me what you think then you cannot offend me. There are a lot of naysayers. That's OK. I have never ever worked on a major project where there weren't loads of people telling me I was crazy. It certainly is possible that I a...

You can check out what I have done so far here: http://chucktilbury.com.

Go to projects- > 3D printer. I intend to have it going by the end of this year.

So... Yes the reprap makes 3d positives from plastic. You could use it to make patterns. There are commercial units that make molds directly. They're really expensive. Here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgrGhJ5u5oM I want to build a machine that does this, but cheaper. I am thinking ...

I have been doing some research. There is a machine that is open sourced called RepRap. It seems to have everything that I basically need already designed. Here is a link: http://reprap.org/wiki/Main_Page Since I have been getting into it, there seems to be quite a few academic institutions doing wh...

I am thinking of undertaking a fairly major project. It's a 3d printer that can make foundry molds directly out of sand. I want to do that in support of hobbyists. I know this is being done out in the real world but it's expensive and I could not find anything that is on that level. I also make musi...

Success! I hope to post pictures pretty soon.
http://www.chaski.org/homemachinist/vie ... 14&t=94303

I did my first successful aluminum melt and pour. I made a couple of large mixing spoons and some other stuff besides ingots. My furnace melts 5 pounds of aluminum in around 10 minutes and that much copper in around 20 minutes. It uses propane and heats well up to around 55 PSI, but I only need arou...

It seems as though I have the air and the fuel lines reversed. Other burners of this type appear to have the air on the outside of the stream and the fuel on the inside. That make sense for my little dilemma. I'm gonna give it another whack tonight after the day job.

I built a oil burner because I am thinking about free fuel. The thing I built is so unsafe that I am not testing it with anything but water. It draws about 6 inches on the fuel side and blows through about a gallon in 5 minutes. I posted a couple of pictures on my web site. If anyone has any ideas, ...

Firing should be in a swirl pattern, and not on the vessel. The flame should make on the order of 3 rounds before exiting the fire hole, entering alongside a block the vessel sits on, and passing round to heat all sides of the vessel evenly. I was planning to have the flame enter at as steep an ang...

I have updated my site (http://chucktilbury.com/pages/projects/melting-furnace.php) again with potential plans and a python script to calculate the actual dimensions of the furnace based on crucible size. Seems like an A8 crucible is the best size for me. An A6 leaves 550+ cubic inches of refractory...