Entry Level Casting.

Home enthusiasts discuss their Foundry & Casting work.

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wildun
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Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:13 pm
Location: Auckland, New Zealand.

Entry Level Casting.

Post by wildun »

Basically I could be called a raw beginner with no actual casting experience, although, in the past, I had the opportunity to produce some drawings and make wooden patterns and cast iron coreboxes for fluid valves, this I found very interesting work and I was more or less given a free hand but, it also meant that I had to work it all out for myself with the aid of a couple of books and a drawing board. (no net or CAD in those days!).
I found it very interesting, so much so, that I turned down CNC training as I was happy doing development work and CNC tooling which I was doing at the time!
I especially liked it when I needed to go to the local foundry to discuss things with the patternmakers there - being able to watch the casting process in operation in the foundry (and getting paid!) as well.

Suggestions will be welcome re: setting up a casting operation for ally and perhaps bronze, in the suburbs and trying to get round restrictions, neighbours etc. also what would be the most suitable types of furnace? ie. clean, quiet and cheap! - we are on 240 volts single phase, but maybe propane would be best?

It's all very much in the future as yet - just an embryo in my mind!

Thanks,
Will.
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steamin10
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Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by steamin10 »

Cast around on the Casting section here, and read about the progress -Pipsec- (Charlie Pipes). made for his bronze castings, from start to finish. (Sorry for the cheap pun, just had to).

Keep your furnace small, and your material clean without paints and oils, and you should be unnoticed for the most part. The whole caboodle could be housed in a garden shed, or put on a cart to roll in/out of a garage or other handy space.

There is some very good ameteur U-tube stuff on casting, that bears watching, and some not so good, with errors in safty. But most is casting in the simplest with equipment, home brew.

Read a lot, before you spend a dime. Scrounging, and backyard imagineering, can build your rig for cheap. It is funner that way for me.

I just found out the world standard for a Gold bar is 27.5 pounds. It will set you back about 3/4 of a Million US Dollars.
Big Dave, former Millwright, Electrician, Environmental conditioning, and back yard Fixxit guy. Now retired, persuing boats, trains, and broken relics.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart. My computer beat me at chess, but not kickboxing
It is not getting caught in the rain, its learning to dance in it. People saying good morning, should have to prove it.
wildun
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:13 pm
Location: Auckland, New Zealand.

Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by wildun »

steamin10 wrote: Read a lot, before you spend a dime. Scrounging, and backyard imagineering, can build your rig for cheap. It is funner that way for me.

I just found out the world standard for a Gold bar is 27.5 pounds. It will set you back about 3/4 of a Million US Dollars.
Thanks Dave,
I had a quick look around you-tube and other stuff. - Earlier in the year I had asked a couple of questions on another forum but got involved with family stuff and didn't get to learn a lot about starting up.
We moved to a (new to us) home and I feel that my biggest hurdle could be keeping it all clean and tidy enough for the other half! - so it might be a good to use your idea of having it mounted on a cart.
Maybe I could mount it on a car trailer to take it out somewhere (maybe 15 miles or so from fhe suburb where I live) where I won't annoy anyone, to do the melting and pouring - might just be worth a try!
Of course if I do that it'll probably need to be propane or oil, but then fumes won't matter.

Think I might stick to aluminium for starters and then progress to bronze etc. - by the way, what type of pot is normally used for aluminium melting - I was thinking of using S/S maybe with a ceramic coating?

"Scrounging and imagineering" are my style but I don't think I'll go in for melting gold - too many problems (cashflow that is).

Probably will have a lot more questions.

Cheers,
Will
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Fender
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Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by Fender »

Probably one of the best investments you can make for a home foundry will be a proper clay graphite crucible. Yes, you can use a steel pot of some type with or without a clay wash, but you will struggle with the problem of iron contamination. Many people use propane or oil-fired furnaces, but don't overlook the simplicity of a charcoal furnace to start out. Charcoal makes very little smoke and you can use a vacuum cleaner or a leaf blower for blast. At least, it works for me.
Dan Watson
Chattanooga, TN
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steamin10
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Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by steamin10 »

Yes as Fender notes, and I promote a crucible for sure. Always a speperate vessel for each material, Aluminum VS Bronze metals. Propane with a BIG bottle can run a small furnace by venturi, without a blower. A burner can be built quite simply, and the furnace itself built with brick, castable or fire wool type bricks.

Done correctly, there is not a lot of noise, smoke, or other objectable facets to home casting. Many use the driveway in front of their garage to work on.

Remember there is sand, patterns, hand tools and flasking to take along, with the furnace and raw stock. I use plastic 5Gallon buckets for most stuff, but wood boxes and the like can be aquired for hnadling the stuff to work with.

Read, REad, READ! All the stuff you can get your hands on for hobby founding and art casting. I recommend C.W. Ammen books on the simple and well illustrated Hobby and beginning Professional founding information. There are others , but I feel these are most basic and well guided.

Read and scrounge, cut the price with imagineering. Good on ya!
Big Dave, former Millwright, Electrician, Environmental conditioning, and back yard Fixxit guy. Now retired, persuing boats, trains, and broken relics.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart. My computer beat me at chess, but not kickboxing
It is not getting caught in the rain, its learning to dance in it. People saying good morning, should have to prove it.
wildun
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:13 pm
Location: Auckland, New Zealand.

Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by wildun »

Fender wrote:Probably one of the best investments you can make for a home foundry will be a proper clay graphite crucible. Yes, you can use a steel pot of some type with or without a clay wash, but you will struggle with the problem of iron contamination.
Thanks guys,

Can you tell me how iron contamination affects an aluminium casting? what are the signs?

I think your information input will be a great help to me in the future and as I think I said somewhere, I'm trying to get my lathe tooling sorted out and have devised an addition for making screwcutting a breeze instead of a chore.
Although I have noticed that It does seem to be (at least) partly based on someone else's idea, but as I have only just noticed this, I'm claiming it as 100% my idea! - but who cares, it's only for me.
Great minds think alike (fools seldom differ).
Then there's my dividing head to build, etc etc - never ending!
After all this, there will be what i hope will be the love of my life, metal casting! and that goes back to the time when I used to make large heavy lead medals cast in jam jar lids! - not ideal for wearing!
Later I often called in to the local foundry to check out the casting processes. but got chased out when I decided to take a short cut across the moulding floor and over the freshly built moulds!
(sorry, you'll have to understand that we do spell certain words a little differently to you!,- British style English).
I'll stop rambling now, do some research and get back to you when I start building my amateur (mobile?) foundry.
Thanks for the advice so far.
Cheers,
Will.
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steamin10
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Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by steamin10 »

For our casting purposes with Al-U-Min-E-uhm ( :twisted: ) we need fluidity to capture details of the mold, and reasonable strength without flaws. Silicon is lost to oxidation, and must often be replaced to promote fluidity for the desired detail capture. Aluminum cooked at high temperatures or held liquid too long will lose this essential physical property. Upon disolving some Iron from a pot, bolts, nuts, rivets, or what have you, in the scrap, the aluminum will have poor fluidity and fail to fill thin parts of the casting. A bit more iron, and it will remain a blob of pasty silver metal, that will squish some liquid out, but wont even pour from the vessel. (Ask me how I know!). The Iron cannot be removed, and the aluminum must be re-refined by electric furnaces in a toxic atmosphere. So it is lost for our purposes. Hydrogen porosity is another tough problem, from paints, oils, and humidity. This is all covered in a good book. (Read).

When you search for scrap, hold all cast material and heavy stock. Beverage cans, sheet, and light tubing, are best traded at the scrapper for cast housings, cases, and non extruded materials. Automotive and Diesel pistons work well, but often are made with steel plates in the castings that must be removed. Aluminum heads, must be stripped of all steel, and broken up or sawed to fit into a crucible.

For the ultimate, buy ingot or bar metal from a supply house. This is dificult as quantities may be huge for even a single bar, that will come with an analysis of content.

Having said all that, the steps are easy and most successful if you follow what has been done so many times before. Skip something, and you may well snatch failure from the jaws of victory. Once you are doing it, you will see how easy it is, and to mess it up.
Big Dave, former Millwright, Electrician, Environmental conditioning, and back yard Fixxit guy. Now retired, persuing boats, trains, and broken relics.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart. My computer beat me at chess, but not kickboxing
It is not getting caught in the rain, its learning to dance in it. People saying good morning, should have to prove it.
wildun
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:13 pm
Location: Auckland, New Zealand.

Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by wildun »

steamin10 wrote:For our casting purposes with Al-U-Min-E-uhm ( :twisted: ) we need fluidity to capture details of the mold, and reasonable strength without flaws. Silicon is lost to oxidation, and must often be replaced to promote fluidity for the desired detail capture.

Dave,
Although I have welded aluminium in the past, (acetelene), I have not as yet tried to cast it, but I have read many years ago that a high silicon content promotes good flow characteristics. I also read that it becomes depleted with too much heating.
How, (or in what form) is silicon supplied to be added to the melt? - can't say I've ever seen it before, is it extracted and refined from silica sand?
I have turned quite a lot of aluminium and found that the good flowing, high silicon type becomes an evil monster when it is being turned, needing a lot of attention in the lubricant/cooling department to prevent buildup on the cutting tool! but then a lot of the stuff I was using may have been contaminated with iron as well.

What mix (binder) would I use for moulding sand, and cores ? I quite like the waterglass/CO2 gas idea above the heated resin types, but I dunno the details here.

I believe that many chainsaw crankcases etc use a high magnesium content, how good is that for casting? - is there any fire hazard with this material?

Guess that's enough questions for the moment, but no doubt there will be more. It's getting toward midnight here and time for bed.

Cheers,
Will.
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steamin10
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Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by steamin10 »

Silica, is sand, silicon is a metal. In small amounts it is a modifier for characteristics of machining metals, and ductility. This is a material available from casting supply houses. Just one of many supplies that will have to be found.

The exotic metal that is Magnesium is rare for use in the real world. If in doubt, run a peice on a grinding wheel, it will shower an amazing amount of sparks. Aluminum will be dead. Both are lightweight, and unlikely to be confused with other metals, othrer than diecast, which is usually a medium gray when exposed. Diecast is zinc-aluminum based, and has small use for detail parts of little strength. Avoid adding any to your aluminum castings.

Slow down, get some books and read!

There is a search engine here and you can find many conversations, that will help. I cannot give you 30yrs of experience in some small notes here, and make you successful.
Big Dave, former Millwright, Electrician, Environmental conditioning, and back yard Fixxit guy. Now retired, persuing boats, trains, and broken relics.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart. My computer beat me at chess, but not kickboxing
It is not getting caught in the rain, its learning to dance in it. People saying good morning, should have to prove it.
wildun
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:13 pm
Location: Auckland, New Zealand.

Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by wildun »

steamin10 wrote:
Slow down, get some books and read!

There is a search engine here and you can find many conversations, that will help. I cannot give you 30yrs of experience in some small notes here, and make you successful.
Dave,
Yes, you'e right, I'll take your advice, I've exhausted my store of questions right now anyway and it's time to look closely at it all.
I guess I'm getting a little carried away here as I start to get older and want to do things while I still can. :oops:

I need to find out about foundry supplies and suppliers next and there should still be quite a few in this country.

Thanks to both you guys for pointing me in the right direction - but I'll still come back with more questions after a while, no doubt!

Cheers,
Will.
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steamin10
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Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by steamin10 »

I like to say 'the devil is in the details', and it is. Building an operational home foundry is understanding what you need, and dont need. Anybody has an idea of how to create, say, a book, printing, binding, pages, cardboard cover. When it comes to actually doing it, what kind of cardboard for the cover, what size, thickness, lithograph wrapper, leather? On and on. Founding is like so many other skills, it is knowing how it works, more than the doing. Once schooled the doing is easy. Ancient cultures were gang casting horse bits in Bronze several millenia ago. What a time it must have been to see bellows firing a pot with glowing metal! I love history in that way. We consider ourselves modern, but stall over trivial things, done well for hundreds of years.

I wish you the best, on your quest. D.
Big Dave, former Millwright, Electrician, Environmental conditioning, and back yard Fixxit guy. Now retired, persuing boats, trains, and broken relics.
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of Smart. My computer beat me at chess, but not kickboxing
It is not getting caught in the rain, its learning to dance in it. People saying good morning, should have to prove it.
wildun
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:13 pm
Location: Auckland, New Zealand.

Re: Entry Level Casting.

Post by wildun »

steamin10 wrote:I like to say 'the devil is in the details', and it is. Building an operational home foundry is understanding what you need, and dont need.

I wish you the best, on your quest. D.
Dave,
The holidays are more or less over now and on Monday, everyone will be back at work, but I have been checking the foundry supply companies, the two most notable here are FOSECO and PYROTEK, which are names which you'll no doubt be familiar with.
I think that I will be going to PYROTEK as their depot is just 10 mins. drive from here and (unbelievably), they are very interested in helping me set things up and give me advice, even though I won't be contributing a lot to their profits!

In the meantime I have managed to download Tubal Cain's series of 'You Tube' videos just to familiarise myself and get to understand something about it all.

I have also found a very good forum (motorcycle) here in New Zealand with some guys who seem to be very good at patternmaking and whose workshop is located about one and a half hours away who are willing to share their experiences.

When I did a little patternmaking a long time ago, I was very impressed by the 'shell moulding' process, using heated metal patterns, ........and shellsand is readily available!

So, all in all, I am fairly well catered for right here on my doorstep!

However, thank you for your help, - I may call back to ask a few questions now and again but my hands are quite full at the moment, trying to absorb the stuff I've found.

Cheers,
Will.
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