10-28-2016, 06:50 AM
Well I took to heart all the advice given here as well as a little googling, made a second effort today at a somewhat simpler casting, a gear quadrant for the Paradisi universal dividing head.
Had the brilliant idea to break the donor transfer case housing down with the log splitter
I ran the furnace with much less oil flow, needed nearly as much air as the previous time as I had the furnace in the shed which made the smoke very obvious. The shed roof survived and the canoe did not come crashing down.
I used plain table salt for flux (old post on another forum) and degassed with bicarb soda, both doses wrapped up in tinfoil packages (thanks myfordboy). Pretty much as soon as the charge was liquid I opened the furnace, scooped off the dross, added salt to taste then stirred in the bicarb (which brought up a whole lot more dross) then scooped again, looked much cleaner than last time.
Poured the mould with a couple of muffins left over..
The casting came out looking a whole lot better, I buried it in the sand to cool slowly after breaking out but here's a photo before the phone battery went flat.
I got a real kick out of this, felt great to get what appears to be a good casting on my second attempt. Lots of machining to do on this so plenty of opportunity to find flaws (or make them) but looks good at this stage.
A few more simple aluminium castings and I might have the confidence to try some iron. Need to try my hand at core making too to give that gearbox case a real shot.
Had the brilliant idea to break the donor transfer case housing down with the log splitter
I ran the furnace with much less oil flow, needed nearly as much air as the previous time as I had the furnace in the shed which made the smoke very obvious. The shed roof survived and the canoe did not come crashing down.
I used plain table salt for flux (old post on another forum) and degassed with bicarb soda, both doses wrapped up in tinfoil packages (thanks myfordboy). Pretty much as soon as the charge was liquid I opened the furnace, scooped off the dross, added salt to taste then stirred in the bicarb (which brought up a whole lot more dross) then scooped again, looked much cleaner than last time.
Poured the mould with a couple of muffins left over..
The casting came out looking a whole lot better, I buried it in the sand to cool slowly after breaking out but here's a photo before the phone battery went flat.
I got a real kick out of this, felt great to get what appears to be a good casting on my second attempt. Lots of machining to do on this so plenty of opportunity to find flaws (or make them) but looks good at this stage.
A few more simple aluminium castings and I might have the confidence to try some iron. Need to try my hand at core making too to give that gearbox case a real shot.
Lathe (n); a machine tool used in the production of milling machine components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.
Milling Machine (n); a machine tool used in the production of lathe components.