Building a new tilting furnace and getting back up and runnning after heart surgery

I'd like to see a closer view of the Arduino. It looks like you got a neat set up going on. I look forward to the video.

 

Kelly, Pete, thanks for the Ideas
One of my restrictions is weight as this furnace is getting really heavy especially when you ad 200 to 275 lbs of metal in it, the furnace empty with minimal hard face weighs a little over 250 lbs. I had to go with 2 actuators in order to get the current draw down into a reasonable range. One actuator would lift it but was drawing 3 times the current that was on the name plate. It also bowed the actuator tube. All but the lids have 2" Kaowool with ceramic slip sand core structures in the very bottom similar to what Kelly suggested. I am also considering putting a layer of 1/4" screen in the middle of the refractory in the lower part. I think I'm going to just try using a skin coat of SS and ceramic with no sand on the lids. I find that without some protection the 2300 f Kaowool doesn't survive the oil flame temps.

Thanks again for the input
Art B

 

I try to pull shafts but don't worry about much else, one of the reasons for going to the bigger furnace is the reduced need for shut down and clean out in the middle of a large melt, my current orders stand at 800 lbs the ability to melt for 4 or 5 hours with out shutting down to clean out the furnace will make a large difference in production times. With the lids closed I get almost no smoke with the exception of if I miss a fairly large chunk of rubber. the burners do put in about 25% extra air the burner bore is 3" but the actual inner burner is only 2" with the extra combustion air for a clean burn on oily parts cumming around the actual oil burner. I'm not sure i can get a viewable picture of this arrangement without tearing a burner apart.

ArtB

 

I'm just thinking outside the box. Maybe balancing a 40-60%. The 40% side would be molten aluminum. A bit of a teeter totter. This could be achieved now by hand with a long handle. The heavier boys like me (in the 200 pound plus band camp) like calling this mechanical leverage.

 

I was always the skinny kid wayyy out at the end of the teeter totter.

 

yep, you and I used to team up to out wit, or out weight the big boy. In the real world there's 4 different styles of big boys. But only 50% of them actually earned it. Sorry about my rant. I can't say much more than this as it might get political.

 

yesterday was more chaos then one person could keep up with and still do a video, i did pour 125 lbs. the furnace had 200 lbs of solidified melt from prior test firing, I took 2 hours to melt the pool again and a 4 hour run burned 15 gallons of oil, It takes a whole lot more fuel to remelt the pool then to melt the engine casting due to the reduced surface area, exhaust temp stayed right at 1200f until it finally got the pool melted, the holding exhaust temp was 800 with the end burner shut down and the middle (pool) burner running at 50% with the propane stabilization burner off. By the end of the day I had pretty well gotten all the bugs out and was starting to get a rhythm going. but it got dark and I ran out of oil in the feed tank.
continuation today along with changing the shop from fabrication mode to production mode.

Art B

 

Looks like a perfect place for a brick arch. Be pretty easy to put ties through the wool.

Have you tried Satanite?

 

Art, I'm still looking forward to a video. I do think a continuous melt, ladle out, would be better for a scrapping furnace.

 

Just a quick update; I experienced a design flaw in the tilting furnace, I set the lifts so the lowest elevation on the furnace still had the melt pool at the pour end, I have about 1000 lbs in orders so i loaded the tilting furnace with about 250 lb of scrap, melted that and then reloaded it getting ready to start pouring, because the furnace was already hot it melted the reload faster then I could pour it and ended up filling my small furnace completely full of aluminum, about 60 lbs worth. before I got control back on the tilting furnace. I have spent the last 3 days rebuilding the small furnace, I had to strip it down to the metal and go from there. I'm set to pour again tomorrow. I'm also in the process of redesigning the lift so that in the bottom position it puts the pool at the back end of the furnace so that when do I over load it again I can get the aluminum away from the pour end of the furnace. I opened the Ebay store to soon and it has buried me in orders. But it also provided sufficient cash flow to stay in front of the costs building the new furnaces etc. Its just that I can only work for about 4 hours and then I run out of energy. I'll try to make a video sometime this week.

Art B