Ants wasp nest casts ? No ?

Discussion in 'Metal casting projects' started by Ben Ricard, Mar 24, 2020.

  1. Ben Ricard

    Ben Ricard Copper

    Hi..
    After going down the YouTube rabbit hole of boredom and research..
    My son , asked me.. if we will cast any any nest this summer..

    Have any of u actually done that ? I mean seriously? Or is that YouTube fantasy land ?
    Thanx in advance
    Ben Ricard
    Frankfort Maine
     
  2. Tobho Mott

    Tobho Mott Administrator Staff Member Banner Member

    I have poured a handful of anthill castings in aluminum. A couple of them came out pretty good; a couple more were disappointingly small once I dug them up.

    I think the trick to it is superheating the metal so it takes a while to cool and freeze. For the best result I have had, I carefully vacuumed loose grains of sand away from the entrance and used a sprue extension like you can see in Myfordboy's casting videos to add head pressure and concentrate the pour above the sprue.

    I have a super old video of that pour from back in my charcoal furnace and steel pipe crucible days, where you can see what I mean - the unusually bright glow of the crucible of molten aluminum, the leaking sprue entender, the vacuum cleaner on the lawn in the background, etc...



    I should have piled up some sand around the sprue extender to stop it from leaking out under the can like it did. Sometimes I wonder how much more aluminum that nest could have taken if I had used a bigger crucible then, as when I dug it up, I could see that the metal did not reach the very bottom...

    Here's a pic of it on the lost foam cast stand I made for it:

    20200324_090807_copy_520x1040.jpg

    For me, anthill casting is fun to do once in a blue moon just for kicks. But really, I enjoy making molds... This sort of lets the ants have most of the fun in that regard. They are great little sand molders. If only we could train them to dig parts-shaped tunnels and put them to work! :D

    Jeff
     
    Ben Ricard likes this.
  3. Jason

    Jason Gold

    That's not the youtube rabbit hole! One night I fell WAYYY down that hole and came across this beaut of a casting video.:eek: The 300k + views tells me our society is screwed!

     

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