I Know I'm out of date, but I remember when Resin bonded sand was washed out using different systems, the simplest being similar to the Sluice boxes gold Miners use ... Got a stream in your backyard?? this could be your thing V/r HT1
I have a swamp in the back yard (bog iron source!), no streams though. I had a look at some sand lumps I had left from brass casting: they're crumbly and fall apart in my hands so the glue is breaking down after 6 months. Sand is easy for me to obtain for next to nothing, it might be more environmentally friendly to use it and let it break down in sunlight and rain than to use energy to process it, after it's broken down over time I could reuse it.
perhaps run a Sluice box off the end of one of your rain gutters, cant get much more enviromental then that V/r HT1
I'll have to run some experiments, I thought a ball mill could reduce it back to sand for not much electricity, maybe give it a good wash in a plastic barrel afterwards.
I think someone has already mentioned it, but you will have to get out the Binder before reusing the Sand or you will start having issues, what those issues are: Not setting, quick setting, weak, too strong Ect. I dont know, but resin bonded sands cannot be straight reused like Green sand. most sand produced for Foundry use is Washed anyhow, SO... V/r HT1
My original idea is to just use fresh sand once per mould, there's a sand mine less than a mile from my house with a brand new plant for grading sand. A mile in the opposite direction to the sand mine is the beach, if the right type of glue is used then it's considered clean fill which is a desirable land fill and can be dumped for free, that's the plan anyway.
I took a few mobile phone shots of some of the finished machined castings (not machined by me) : in the first photo the smaller castings down the bottom are spindle housings that take two ball bearings. You can faintly see some crystal structure in the spindle castings a bit like galvanized iron, this is due to to using razor sharp tungsten carbide tooling that get sharpened on a tool and cutter grinder before use. On the third photo the bottom right casting shows small dots of porosity probably from a too hot crucible when pouring. All of the castings were perfectly usable so I'm pretty happy.
The first machines made from the castings were painted, assembled and were getting calibrated. Also some random pics of other castings on display.
Gem faceting machine, these let you take a gemstone and give it a "Standard Brilliant" cut or "Zircon" or "Emerald" cut all the way from rough grind to final polish by using a series of 6" plated diamond laps of different grit size. The gem gets stuck to a brass "Dop" stick to cut the top half or the bottom half. There's a series of index wheel positions (looks like an aluminium gear wheel) and a series of angles on the protractor. You waste about half the gem's weight as there are specific angles you can't exceed if you want the gem to sparkle properly that are based on the gem's refractive index.
That's true, I've seen similar tiny 4" lap machines without the faceting head for preparing microscope samples of metals and minerals. I tallied up the castings for this machine, including the base, spindle housing, swing-arm, box, pulleys, knob and there's eleven castings total in such a small machine.
