For better or worse processes are more interesting to me than accomplishing something useful with them. In the 80s I was doing investment casting, mostly jewelry related lost wax. We built a foundry furnace and did some mystery metal bronze pours. What I have retained of that skill set is just enough to be dangerous. I am looking forwards to learning from others here. I'm getting into green sand casting. Only aluminum at present. My focus is casting for machining rather than art. But I expect some art will sneak in. Currently I am using an old Kerr 666, electric burn out oven with a 6"x6"x6" interior, and a cube shaped steel crucible. The green sand came from my yard. I am experimenting with DIY refractories and will eventually be building my own furnace(s). There is bound to be some reinventing the wheel here and I am OK with that. Cast this pulley for my lathe mounted milling machine, aka Master Mill. Its is a good example of the upper limit of what I can pour with the current setup. The cast in holes were added to stretch the aluminum after the first pour came up short. So far I have been conditioning my sand by hand. When I get a muller running I want to look at improving its green strength. Dan Harold aka Dusty
The milling attachment was also manufactured under the name Versa Mill for a while. Mine was with the tooling for my lathe. You can find them on ebay but most often too dear. Mine came without a motor so I have mounted a DC treadmill motor. The pulley in the images is too large. The right one is ready to machine but I am dragging my feet.
I think it looks pretty good for sand out of the yard. The holes look nice, they would clean up pretty easily.
That's not a pulley, it's a FLYWHEEL. That's big chunk of metal. Dan are you following Tobho motts work on his muller and sand? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyxrbU-NFistsENpVGbAjOw Good stuff on there for ya.
Sadly that chunk of metal is too big. I sized it to use the existing drive pully on the motor and a belt I hand on hand. The belt needs to ride on the motor flywheel and drive a pulley on the mill just slightly smaller than the motor flywheel. Yes on the sand Tobho Motts and I frequently chat in Paul's Garage (Discord).
It will be fun to see what I can do with it when I have a muller. For now I plan to riddle out some finer facing sand and if that is not enough add dextrin to the facing sand. The pulley is just a bit to big to mount off center in the lathe. So maybe the die grinder.
Welcome Dusty, based on the size of that pulley and the description above I'd say you're getting the most out of what you have. Best, Kelly
You guys should check out Dan's video about the natural greensand he's been mining in his backyard, it's pretty interesting and I don't recall ever seeing any other videos covering this process: I've been following along with his recent experiments with Lionel from BYMC's homemade refractory recipe as well. Cool stuff! Jeff
I've been following Dan's progress. He's been working his ass off in the dirt. Interesting stuff. Hope it works for him.