Life Cycle of a Stainless Steel Crucible

I guess I missed that thread. If I saw it I copied you, but it does not look familiar. I do the same as you however after a relief cut, or maybe two, I find I can cut all the way through without binding then just chew away until the wheel is gone.

 

What I am saying is after a couple of cuts leaving just a small ligament there's not much left to cause pressure to pinch the blade so I've found I can cut through on the third cut, or go back and cut through the first ligament making what looks like a wider cut. It's really handy for me to then just nibble away at the rest of the wheel.

 

One of our sorely missed members at AA, Bob S used(s) a wood splitter. Pretty ballsy if you ask me. One of his later posts showed him using a stack melter so I guess the splitter wasn't always his best option.
I've done some in a stack melter and some in the bonfire, and I agree with OIF, the digging gets old.
The last rim I did was on my horizontal bandsaw in the upright position. It wasn't bad when I had a steady feed, but once you're freehanding it it goes south pretty easily. It gave the blade a pretty undue beating.
I have about 6 or 700lbs of ingots and other "prepared" aluminum and just had to stop. Fortunately I've kept track of its sources and kept it sorted so at least I know what it is.

This is one of my latest sources. They're fuser rollers from photocopiers. I have about 4 buckets full of chunks and a 40 gal garbage can full of uncut ones. I'm not sure of the alloy but it casts well. Very convenient too!




Pete

 

Should get quite a bit of use out of this then...

 

One small item from the bifilm rabbit hole, the more spout you have the better. Even a small drop from spout to pouring basin creates oxides and they recommend pouring as close as you can and with a nicely developed spout in an attempt to keep the stream round and compact.

 

That is good to know. Might have to heat it a little more and give it a little hydraulic press action. Otherwise I may have some heavy angle I can splice in.

 

I've not done it yet, but my new crucible is going to have a better forged spout, I hope.

 

Going to heat and smash it on the flypress?

 

Tap gently...

Fly press it a good idea, I think I have the tooling in place. First one I just worked on the anvil horn, it was red and worked easily.

 

Mine wasn't hot enough but now the gas forge is going I could try again.

Strangely enough my graphite crucible doesn't have much of a spout molded into it either.

 

The bifilm theory and advice does not rely on existing technology.

 

Gah... how inconvenient that existing technology is always so out of date!

 

I'm still using my used up crucible, no leaks yet. But I got it too hot yesterday and some of the holes are looking suspect.



That one under the ears seems to have oozed last heat.

 

The hole in the side of my crucible still has not leaked. It gets plugged with Kelly. I mean Aluminum Oxide.



I poked it with a welding rod, soft powder, 1/4" diameter.



That is all the way through.

Several through holes. Not sure how long it would be before it leaked, but I had the materials so I made a new one.



Ready for another year or two. My first one had direct flame impingement in my stacked brick furnace so maybe this one will last longer.

 

Your old one certainly proved its worth. Maybe it can spend its retirement as a dross pot.

Pete

 

That's a good plan.

I've made about 30 pours on my new crucible with no spout (some of them through the teapot pipe) but I'm using the open top so yesterday I fired up the coal forge and bumped a spout with the fly press.





Not as much spout as I'd planned but it works fine. After filming lots of pours I finally realized what everyone else knows: the oxide film floating on the surface stays put in the crucible when you pour aluminum, molten metal runs out from under the edge anyway.

 

This is one I built.

 

Nicely done. Very good demonstration of the method used and a technique potentially usable by many folks. Thanks.

Denis