Nice... centre of gravity? looks like the walls could have been a bit thinner...
somewhere around the end of the hole.. The walls could certainly have been thinner, but I did this to make them reusable, not working when i'm shattering them against bricks, or burying them under the lawn
New foundry built today, and a torch to go with it.
Capacity will probably be about 200 cubic inches with a steel crucible, about 1/3 that with my graphite one.
I threw five pounds of steel in it and got it glowing orange in 3-4 minutes. It's mainly for bulk aluminum, but I might try using it to cast steel in the far future.
Works now... wasn't done converting apparently. Vimeo chewed the compression up a bit
I'd actually like to get a lathe underway; much more useful in the long run. If I can get it to melt steel I might use it for a high-pressure fittings I'd otherwise have to order online. And I'd never have to buy thick stock material again.
Thought about using casting to make your QDV hybrid idea? Now that I think about it, casting does open up a lot of possibilities for piston valve design and manufacturing custom fittings to improve hybrid design.
Thought about using casting to make your QDV hybrid idea?
That's a possibility, though the paint bucket foundry had enough capacity for the bulkiest part in that design(piston). For testing purposes I'll probably make some ash trays for the guys at work, since a couple of them asked me why I rolled a big chunk of galvanized steel yesterday .
Oh yeah, and I may use this as a forge in the future.
It's just propane. You can probably see there's no second inlet on the torch. (typically you need forced air with a waste oil torch).
I cranked up the heat a little sunday night and scrapped some copper I had laying around... here's a crappy video still of the crucible coming out.
Attachments
There was somebody else there with me but the camera was on the tripod the whole time. The rest of the video is just me complaining about stuff and talking about all the horrible things that can go wrong when you're playing with hot metal.
Fnord, by horrible things that can go wrong while you're playing with hot metal, does that include dropping the full crucible while you're wearing shorts?
itwost, I got my hands on a working A/C compressor. All I need is a single compression fitting and air filter and I can say goodbye to 10 minute pumping sessions.
This is what I did today. Not exactly helpful for most of us but might be a useful example for newbies. The main reason I filmed it was just so I had some hard numbers for these two cannons (my only 'large' bore pneumatics).
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