Another Kiwi

Discussion in 'New member introductions' started by Guster, Mar 13, 2019.

  1. Redwolf947

    Redwolf947 Copper

  2. Guster

    Guster Silver

    Probably irrelevant but it pumps out some serious heat! Finally got my needle valves fitted. I should have tapped the gas of the center of the manifold to keep the hose out of the heat though...
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2019
    Petee716 and DavidF like this.
  3. Nice.

    You might hard pipe to below the forge level so the hose never has an opportunity to get close to the action.
     
  4. Guster

    Guster Silver

    I was thinking that too! It was OK being hooked out of the way and high enough that the wind wasn't a problem.

    I just now discovered ribbon burner construction and itching to make one.
     
  5. Al2O3

    Al2O3 Administrator Staff Member Banner Member

    You'll be Jason's hero!

    Best,
    Kelly
     
  6. Guster

    Guster Silver

    I take it to mean someone here is a bit of a fan of them.
     
  7. Last edited: Mar 16, 2019
  8. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Yup... That would be me. I run my ribbon burner forger off piddly 7" wc natural gas. Welding temps are easy. I've got tons of insulation and a mizzou coating over it. Being a tight chamber helps a lot. I do very little forging, but it's nice to have when the need arises. What I wanna see is a furnace with a pair of 12" long ribbon burners melting metal. Light and go.
     
  9. Petee716

    Petee716 Gold Banner Member

    I like the airflow adjustment on your burners. Did you make the threaded tubes or are they lamp parts?

    Pete
     
  10. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Hey, No job is complete without lamp parts, toilet parts and donations from 3 Christmas tree stands.
     
    Tobho Mott likes this.
  11. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    I am sure interested in Jason’s ribbon burners for a metal melting furnace. After i have the other details of the foundry worked out. I will surly be trying to work out something directly related to his design.
    Joe
     
  12. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Awesome.. I'll see what kind of tech data I still have. You'll need Mizzou and some birthday candles for the nozzletts.. Start a new thread when you are ready to build it and I'll be happy to help out.
     
  13. joe yard

    joe yard Silver

    Thank you Jason!
    You can see from my build thread where I am at on the furnace for now. I am not sure I can adapt this type of burner to the present build. It is a 3 part furnace. I built it with the intent of being able to change out the 3 parts as needed.
    The foundry is the project of the year so all efforts that can be extended to that end will be before anything else. For now the burn chamber has a 2 inch access hole for the burner. I have a siphon nozzle. I have been thinking that I have a 1 inch NG line ran the entire run from the meter to the shop but on second thought I cant quite remember if it is 1 inch the full run or if I might have run the underground in 3/4 stainless flex line. It was a few years back and the flex line was something new to me.
    The house and shop both run off of this meter so I am a bit concerned about supply.
    One option to correct this might be to install a second meter. The Shop has separate power. It also has plumbing hooked into the main line for a gas meter with the plumbing ran up to and bracketed to the outside of the shop but no meter was ever installed.
    If the gas company would install a second meter for a reasonable price. That would solve the problem. With luck they might call it a new service and have 0 charge but when was I ever that lucky. A few years back they charged me $500 to move my meter 1 foot over so I could do some concrete work.
    Joe
     
  14. Jason

    Jason Gold

    Yeah, I love dealing with the gas company too. I'd rather spend the afternoon in the dentist chair. :rolleyes: If you could get the gas company to just up the pressure, it would make life so much easier and we wouldn't have to get creative with ng burners.
     
  15. Guster

    Guster Silver

    Sorry for the late reply. Just come back from a work jaunt in Sydney.

    The threaded 'tube' is just some 12mm allthread that I drilled out a 5mm through hole on a lathe and threaded one end for a MIG welding tip as a nozzle and welded a 1/4" BSP nipple to the other end. I would love to modify the flat 'throttle' plates to the cone design I used on the smaller furnace burner(pic below). I found these to give more linear airflow control over the flat plates and improved the flame stability at the lower end if the burnrate. Hey... maybe I should cast some. :cool:
    [​IMG]
     
  16. Guster

    Guster Silver

    Caught up with Nudge last Sunday since he practically lives around the corner from me. Very friendly and helpful, offering advice and sharing his experience. Also went home with a lifetime supply of sodium silicate. Thanks Nudge!

    Weather wasn't the greatest this weekend so I gave the exposed kaowool on the forge a coating of sodium silicate+kaolin+zirconium silicate. Then set about making some tools for the A5 size graphite clay crucible.
    [​IMG]

    Then set about mixing some greensand using 1kg bentonite powder for every 9kg sand ratio. 45kg mixed up since I only had 5kg bentonite I kept 500g bentonite in case it needed more since the sand is so fine. So far it looks good and just needs time to soak up moisture and a bit of mulling now and then.
    [​IMG]

    Currently working on my oil supply system. Then it's time for flasks and some kind of molding bench.
     
    oldironfarmer likes this.
  17. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Gold Banner Member

    Looks great! You're lucky to have someone close by who can show you some stuff.

    I built my molding bench out of half of a plastic barrel and it works well; I just built a wooden frame around it with a hinged plywood lid to cover it when it is not being used.

    I started sand casting with about the same amount of greensand you've made, and once I built that molding bench it was easy to recondition all my sand at once with a kitchen mixer beater chucked in my drill.



    That first 100lbs of mine came pre-mulle from a foundry supplier, so I never had to hand-mull it.

    Curious to hear how you went about that. Tarp stomp dance? As I understand it, it takes a lot of squishing and smearing to really give each grain of sand it's own thin coat of bentonite so that it sticky enough to make good molds with.

    Building my muller allowed me to make and maintain more sand. I think what you have made is close to the most sand one could reasonably deal with the way I used to, without having to do it in batches. It's also about exactly the amount of sand it takes to fill my 12" X 16" flask. Or a 12X12, with more than enough sand left over to ram up an open mold for pouring ingots.

    Good luck!

    Jeff
     
  18. Guster

    Guster Silver

    Nudge offered me two smaller buckets of commercial green sand. Unfortunately I was committed(certifiably) having purchased sand and clay already. Our local suppliers sells greensand by the 25kg bag but it comes out of the bag in one great hard lump so I was not entirely better off without a means to mull it, unless by hand. I might still do that later on though I have another 150kg of sand to play with and a spare empty 50L plastic drum with sealable lid. Some will be kept for core making and some might try making a diy investment plaster with.

    I dry mixed in the drum using one of those tile cement mixing wands you use in drill. Putting the drum on angle and rolling it allowed me to get to the stuff on the sides and bottom. Then poured it out onto the tarp and took a slightly different course by wetting the sand enough that it started washing the bentonite out of the sand on the surface. Putting the bentonite in suspension that I can work the sand through using a rake. Then I left it in the sun to drive out the majority of the moisture. Working it over till it stopped being sludgy and started clumping. May have walked over it a few times too. Then transferred it back to the drum knowing that the clay will still keep absorbing water and that I can always put it back in the sun if needed. So far it is getting better and better just giving it some time and working it over in the drum with a trenching spade. Already it is sticking to my hands less. Strangely the tile cement mixer now does nothing but compact it rather than mixing.

    I acquired a stainless laundry tub for $5 that I plan to make a molding bench around. As soon as I have modified the drain to fit a larger outlet(possibly custom) so I can "drain" the sand back into a plastic drum below. The plan is to make a thresher/fluffer like oldfoundryman uses, having plenty of motors and steel at hand already. I considered a muller since I have these 10"x3" wheels waiting for a purpose(along with motors and reduction worm gearboxes)
    [​IMG]

    I'm still mulling over that idea. ;)
     
  19. Great muller wheels!

    The advantage of buying greensand is that the sand has been mulled, that is each grain of sand is coated with clay. After that it only has to be fluffed, which a muller will do, but I think olfoundryman's fluffer is probably better, it is super quick. The other method is the ribbed elevator belt (can't remember what it's called, you probably know).

    I got a potato masher to mash up the lumps. It does a great job of compacting greensand.:oops: But not enough to ram a mold.

    Stainless tub is a great idea. A hermetically sealed lid would be even better.

    When do we see more fire?
     
  20. Guster

    Guster Silver

    They would make great muller wheels. Would need a pretty heavy duty base plate to run on... think they would do funny things to something like a steel drum. Haven't heard about methods using the belt and the only other type I've seen used in a foundry is the one that uses a set of counter-rotating blades/paddles that processes the sand against it's own weight where the 'drum' is almost loaded to the top. Well aware that I have a few days of mixing ahead of me and that the fluffer is more of a post-processing machine. Just thinking I'd use the fluffer more than a muller and the fluffer is nice and compact. But the weather isn't great, daylight savings has kicked in and there is nothing much else to do till Saturday. Hey, some people pay to excercise! ;)

    So the masher mashes the lumps making bigger lumps but not big enough of a lump to fit in the flask? :rolleyes:

    Flasks and pattern making first. I do love playing with the fire part so sorting out the waste-oil supply so I can make more of it. Replumbing the waste-oil burner too and moving the regulator and some valves upstream to cut down on air connectors etc. I broke down some old brass plumbing ready for a brass melt and looking for my paintball equipment. I'm sure I had a regulator and half full 20oz CO2 bottle to test making sodium silicate cores with. These bottles... cylinders have the same valve thread as a Sodastream cylinder so all my parts could be used with one of those too. Even think I have the right thread tap from recollection.

    Oh... and looks like more rain this weekend. :(
     

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