Hello, been lurking through the posts for a bit now. I started in my highschool metalshop class. We had a decent furnace in there and I used to bring in old scrap brass and aluminum my dad gave me. I'd pour it into rods and use it for lathe projects in the class. I'm looking to do the smaller version of that at home. Picked up a decent Grizzley lathe, and I'm looking to pick up a small furnace to melt down a LOT of hard drive cases from disassembled hard drives (all aluminum). I don't really have the desire to build a furnace, I've watched a LOT of YT videos on it. I was going to pick up a small (5kg) furnace from Amazon, or a Devils-forge but I' noticed a lot of no love for those. For the purpose of just melting down aluminum or brass into rods for small lathe projects, would they fit the bill ok there? 2" rods, 12" long would be the max I'd be interested in but mostly 1" x 12". Thanks very much for any insight. Jeff
Welcome Jeff... There is no love for those junk furnaces here because we don't like seeing people get ripped off or put their heath in possible danger. These sellers usually supply you with a few feet of kaowool insulation, a tank and a weed burner. If you do not coat the kaowool, you will be breathing potentially harmful fibers that will never leave your lungs. Kaowool must be sealed with a coating and we prefer to use several thinly applied layers of satanite that is fired to red between layers. This makes for a lightweight and cheap furnace that is pretty tough. It will not last as long as proper refractory such as Mizzou or Kastolite. Some of this becomes an issue for people living far away from cities. You are in Las Vegas, I'm sure with a weekend trip to the west, you can source proper refractory materials and build something of much better quality than the junk sold on amazon. Don't you have an industrial metal supply company near vegas? https://www.industrialmetalsupply.com/ I hit them up all the time when I'm out west. (I find metal supermarkets are usually a ripoff) While turning your hard drive scrap into rounds to turn on the lathe sounds like a great idea, understand, cast aluminum is not the same as extruded aluminum! Cast aluminum doesn't always turn the best on the lathe. I buy good aluminum machining stock for 1.79 a pound. And I'm talking really nice fat round stock! Why would I pour it? Not a chance! Yes, brass is a bit more money and I get it, but you can find cheap off cuts too at Industrial metal supply. Last time I was there, I hauled off a 12"x14" box half full of great round stock and blocks perfect for milling and turning for less than a hundred bucks! Hell, If I lived there, I'd buy everything they have and shove the stuff across fleabay way cheaper than the thieves there that are ripping people off! A guy could make a nice little profit just mailing off scrap! So why would I ever melt down scrap just to make shitty machining metal? There is your answer in a nut shell. Now if you want to make castings, let us help you build a proper furnace!
Welcome to thehomefoundry, New Jeff! You gotta understand, we are all a bunch of diy addicts here. In other words it feels like cheating to me, but I'm just as biased as the guys on youtube getting paid to shill for devil forge. They added some rigidizer to those kits some time ago I think, mostly to make Jason stop rasing a stink about the dangers of the unsealed fiber blanket in youtube comment sections. If not, it's easy to add a few coats of satanite refractory mortar... at some extra expense. (Maybe just as easy as wrapping some fiber blanket around the inside of a bucket yourself?). I think I would add some satanite too even if it does come with rigidizer. I'm sure one of those kits would work for what you describe if you want to pay a lot to avoid a weekend diy build. Pay attention to the accessories that come with the kits. I think there's a pinned thread here where many of us have shown our safe and effective crucible tools. Might be a good idea to have a look and see how the devil forge tongs compare before you decide, to see how much work and expense you might be looking at in improvements. Tongs that grip the rim of the crucible might not be that unsafe for the small crucibles you are talking about, but not for me thanks. Jeff
Hi all, Thanks for the feedback. I'm more of a DIYer than buy and I'm cheap ha, ha. 90% of what I have in my garage is home made and at a fraction of what others are paying. On this one though, I'm just not as excited to do it. I don't mind paying a couple bucks for someone to do the work on this one. That being said, I didn't realize about the health concerns of the non coated versions, so Amazon's version is out, thank you for that! Still not sure if this is the way I want to go, but this is good info. I have a couple hundred pounds of the aluminum from old hard drive casings. Most of what I'm making is just for me in the garage so cast would be OK. It's basically anything I can't 3D print I try and machine out and I remember having OK luck with Brass and aluminum there. There are some sources for what I'd want here but they're more expensive than Ebay even. The closest Industrial Metal Supply is LA and that'd 4 or 5 hours depending on the traffic. I would LOVE to have them here, I would empty their scrap bins as well ha, ha. I'm in no hurry though, I have plenty of stock so I'll just keep lurking and reading to make sure I know what I'm getting into. Maybe I'll get an urge to build one at some point too. I do appreciate the map to the pitfalls. Jeff
Buy it or build it. Doesn't matter. Here's the home made version by the forum's staunchest advocate: http://forums.thehomefoundry.org/index.php?threads/nice-satanite-furnace-how-to-video.771/ I'm a lot more concerned about you lifting and pouring your crucible safely. You can melt aluminum many different ways including in a hole in the ground with an airpipe and charcoal, but copper alloys will need a bit more. I have a bunch of ingots made from hard drives. I generally cast with it though. I ingot it first just to get the paint off of it so I'm not dealing with a bunch of crap in my crucible when it's go-time. I usually make turning stock out of extruded aluminum alloys like window frames, fuser rollers from copy machines, etc. There are often good reasons to buy manufactured aluminum alloys for machining such as hardening treatment, etc, but for my shittin around, my dog food can and muffin tin ingots work pretty well. Welcome! Pete
