Interesting cupola video

I was thinking of your A30 disaster. Here are two reasons why you will never build a large crucible furnace, 1. Making all the molds to use a large amount of molten iron 2. Building a large furnace and getting it to work the first time to fill up those molds. How many failures will you tolerate before giving up? Now there is a challenge for you.

 

That was a real downer for sure.
I must post photos.

The backstory on the 70 lbs of solidified iron in a #30 crucible is as follows:
1. Built my first iron furnace; put way way too much dense refractory in it, especially the lid.
2. Warm-ups were very slow.
3. Had no clue about burner settings.
4. Had no clue about what the slag looked like on top of iron, or how to handle it.

The lid vertical support pipe was too small, and was connected to the refractory with a band.
The band slipped during mid-melt, jamming the lid half-open, but it would go no further, so no way to get the crucible out of the furnace.

Lessons learned:
1. How not to build a furnace.
2. How not to run an oil burner.
3. How not to melt iron.

I still have the 70 lb ball of iron, and I use it in a concrete mixer to mull green sand, when I occasionally use green sand.

It was a long litany of doing basically everything wrong that I could possibly do wrong.
The result (happened in 2014):

 

The proverbial "ironsides throwdown challenge"...........LOL.

I don't have the need for so much iron, but I could easily build the furnace, dual burners, and crane, and make it all work these days.
I have come light years as far as iron melting knowledge from 2014.
And I have the cash to do it too, although the wife would probably debate that point hotly.

I haven't had a single failure with iron with the new furnace, and I get perfect iron castings every time these days. Having the correct know-how is no longer an issue with me; I have it down to a science, and the bound sand takes the guesswork out of mold making too.
I use motor end bells, and I never vary from that, so I don't have any irregularities from using odd scrap metal that has unknown qualities.
And I have the exact amount of fero worked out to give very minimal shrinkage, and perfectly machinable and uniformly machinable parts, even when the parts are thin.
I never touch the fuel needle valve on my burner, and never have to adjust it.

I know you have stated many times that nobody ever gets iron castings "down to a science", but I have done just that, basically by removing any variables from the process. I can repeatedly, predictably, and reliably pour high grade iron that is easily machinable (without annealing), and I can walk out to my furnace on any give day and make quality gray iron castings without any trouble.
I also use variations on John Campbell's 10 Rules for Good Castings, and I have his book, and so those sprue/runner/trap/gate/riser methods are working well for me, without problems.

Clarke could definitely use such a high-capacity furnace, and could use that much iron, and he has flasked lined up on two very long conveyor lines in his foundry, and apparently has an immense amount of green sand.

I tolk Clarke that he should either operate one large furnace, as mentioned here in previous posts, or run three medium-sized furnaces, and go round-robin with the pours, with a new melt starting every 20 minutes.

I think much of it amounts to economics of the cost of a large Morgan clay graphite crucible vs a small one (I don't have a quote for a #300 Morgan Salamander Super, but I am sure they are not cheap).
Crucible life with iron is limited, and so one would have to do the numbers to see if it made sense to go with one big pour, versus multiple small ones.

A larger crucible would definitely be much more difficult to handle, and sort of limits you to using a crane to pour.

Clarke is doing a production line, and he pours a tremendous about of iron these days, so I always keep an eye open for potential methods for him to use.

Perhaps a more viable approach if you wanted a lot of capacity, but still had small individual molds, would be to make a tilting furnace using a #300 crucible, and then use insulating fiber ladles, and pour out as you needed metal, much like the video you show at the beginning of this thread.
Steve Chastain wrote a book about a tilting iron furnace, but as I recall, the furnace and crucible were so small that it made more sense to just lift out the crucible.

The only serious drawback I see to using a #300 crucible is the mess it would make if it ruptured.

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Here is a nifty little tilt-and-pour induction furnace, and this is the arrangement I would use if I were building a tilting oil-fired iron furnace with a large crucible.

 

I would build a large tilting furnace about like this, but oil-fire it.
I would just withdraw the two burner tubes prior to tilting the furnace.

https://www.superbmelt.com/electric-induction-furnace/

 

Here is another interesting tilting-furnace design.

 

Here is a MIFCO center pivot tilting melter.
It will take up to a #100 crucible, but I would not use a tilting furnace unless I was going up to a #300 crucible
For a #100 crucible, I would just crane that out of a standard non-tilting furnace.

https://mifco.com/foundry-furnaces/center-pivot-tilting-melters/

 

Not boasting, just stating fact.
Are we in some sort of competition or something where we can't just state were we are in the learning curve? or is it bad form to say you now know what you are doing?

Ironsides never mentions that even in my early days with high failures with iron, I produced two nice operating steam engines, with very nice iron flywheels, and there are no other model engines like them in the world. Below is one of the results of all those iron failures.
With failures like this, who needs successes?

Glad to see someone is keeping up with my threads.
Cool beans; I hate posting into a vacuum.

Its called a "work-a-lanche", I signed six times the number of normal work projects in 2019, and some of that work is due this spring.
Everything has been full-stop as far as foundry work, until I can get caught up with work projects.
Its just me, I don't have employees, and so I have to do six times my regular workload now.
The good thing is I make what six people make, assuming I don't drop dead with fatigue.

Nope, I have not really done much other than some minor adjustments on the lid of the new furnace.
I don't need to fiddle with the new furnace; it works very well.

I am going to convert over to a pressure nozzle, but that is a minor change to the burner.

Ironsides and I have batted back and forth for years, and challenged/bantered each other.
He is in an unofficial competition with anyone who does iron, and much of the joy in life he derives from pointing out the ignorance most others have about iron work (he has lush pickings there, like shooting fish in a barrel).
The 15,000 subscriber thing has sort of inflated his ego rather large, but there can be no doubt he is one of the mainstays in the backyard iron casting hobby, and has been for many years.

But people tend to think that ironsides is infalible given his successes, but he told me that it would take me 20 years to work out my sand, which is baloney, the resin sand I use has never caused problems, and it works beautifully every time.
I learned how to do resin sand overnight.
Ironsides is always right, except when he is wrong.

But if 100 people were offering an opinion about an iron casting, and ironsides's opinion differed from the other 99, I would place my money on ironsides opinion; that is how often he is correct about iron topics (one must give credit where credit is due).

So long story long, ironsides and I have done throwdown challenges to each other for a long time now, and his throwdowns to me have been a big help in keeping me interested in iron long enough to master it (yes, I did master it, and yes I know he would never agree with that statement).

For the non-believers, drop by my house, and lets do some iron, and I can show you first hand; I don't have to bluff or brag or make up stuff.
They say "put up or shut up, and I can definitely put up any day", so there is a throwdown challenge back at the backyard casting world.
Seeing is believing, and I can make a believer out of people very quickly.
But don't come over before about the end of April, because I am snowed with work right now.

All my foundry work is on the back burner until probably mid-year.

I have boxes of 3D printed patterns just waiting to be made into permanent patterns.
Like they say in the wine industry "we shall cast no parts before their time".

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Yeah, like that 15,000 subscriber plaque he made?
That is what he makes; self-aggrandizing stuff.
To each his own, but that is not my cup of tea.

In one of his latest videos, he "dared" anyone to offer an opinion about one of his casting defects, then castigated anyone who disagreed with him.
He doesn't want anyone else's opinions; he already has his mind made up.

This is not an ironsides-bashing session; I admire the guy for what he has done, and what he still does, but I am not the only one that feels the way I do either.

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I basically try to flesh out stuff that is stated about casting metal, to either prove it or disprove it.
Its one thing to make good castings, and an very different thing to understand the process and document it correctly.

The industry told John Campbell that his book was rubbish, and Bob Puhakka has made fools of industry, and continues to do so. Ignore "book smart" stuff at your peril.

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I have a similar very small ladle to dip in my a12 crucible so I can pour wedge tests for iron. It looks like ceramic fiber but if I spill iron onto my furnace floor which is ceramic fiber it will go straight through it. It lasts about 15 dips and get too thin so the bottom is likely to fall out. Really amazing stuff. I was given some but don't know where to get them in Australia.