Hi all, long time lurker amongst you all and first time poster. So, for the sake of introduciton, I discovered BYMC over a decade ago and marveled at what those guys managed to do. Never imagined I could do it myself. Fast forward, last summer I'm trying to finish my CNC mill and needed just a bit more stock to build just a few more parts and it just so happened that I had a few hundred beer cans and for the price of shipping I could just build a furnace and . . . I'm sure you guys know how it goes So, long story short, built a KOR style furnace, realized how bad it was, rebuilt it somewhat more proper, got my dad into the game, "invented" a reactive refractory mix based on dross, cast the parts and finished the mill, suffered a WNY winter, went out to the "fire bucket" to find my crucible disintegrated, cast a new shell in rapidset cement-all (look it up, you'll be pleasantly surprised), found out why you need to ensure cardboard/paper/glue type forms are DRY before burnout, slowly cranked it up, and then sat on firewatch for half an hour waiting for the orange glow to subside to the point where I could walk away. Anyways, it's a new casting season, or at least it will be soon here, so I figured if I want to get in with a community, I might as well do it now, before I wished I hadn't done it sooner. Oh, and I'll give you guys a freebie. We all have odd and eccentric hobbies, sooo . . . http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=147222 - That one's me. Hopefully it can do us some good.
Welcome to the forums. Oooh, you want to make your own styrofoam? Our founding member, DavidF, posted about his experiences trying that, working with pre-expanded polystyrene beads, over on the other forum (alloyavenue) a couple years ago: http://www.alloyavenue.com/vb/showthread.php?13292-Round-and-Round-we-go Maybe you will have better luck... Jeff
Welcome to the forum... I saw you came from a proxy server and all most rejected your membership... " Except NOBODY sells the fuckers! " Yep he will fit right in lol
Thanks for the warm welcome - This ought to be an interesting season. As for updates, blew up the furnace on the last day of good weather I had here. Was trying to dry/season it, but some combination of moisture content, incorrect water ratio when mixed, and thickness all conspired against me. So RapidSet is a no-go, for now at least. On paper it shows promise, but if any of you guys have ever tried to get useful information from and sds/msds I'm sure you know how that goes. Kinda cool though, and gave me a greater appreciation for the magnitude of a catastrophic failure if I was actually melting. Off to TSC, hopefully tomorrow, to grab some firebrick and at least get something up and running. And yes, I know the KOR "rules" - The guy's an idiot, and I quickly rebuilt, but you can't argue that it doesn't "work" - and much less likely to injure someone than cement for a "hardware store" type build. I really don't want to get into that argument here though, so lets drop it. Styrofoam-wise, it hasn't been decent enough outdoors yet to try and dry my "resin" for the next steps. And flipping through that link, I've read it before - and it pretty much sums up the reasons I want to just make the stuff. If you can find legit preexpanded beads, in non-industrial quantities, they're probably out of date. Either that, or, "pre-expanded" as in already expanded and stabilised, ready to stuff in a beanbag. Regardless, of absolutely no use in a die. And I suppose that goes beyond a standard introduction - When I get everything going I post the appropriate threads. Now back to my diy machinable wax - another one of those things that is stupidly more complex than you would think. . .
