Building a new tilting furnace and getting back up and runnning after heart surgery

I've been out of operation due to a heart attack and aortic heat valve surgery, I am in the process of getting set back up, I'm building a new tilting furnace based on a 200 gallon oil tank, it has 2 wast oil burners that should produce about 600 to 750,000 BTUs It is large enough enough to melt complete car engines, my old furnace was designed around melting cylinder heads, it's capacity was about 80 to 90 lbs per hour. This new one should be able to do 200 to 250 per hour, I am using siphon nozzles and waste oil with propane as a pilot and a pressurized 20 gallon tank . the burners will be modulated based on furnace temperature using servo motors on the oil valves.
I market ingots to the casting needs of the small foundry or Hobbyist. In the 4 years prior to my heart attack i processed 23,000 lbs of aluminum. I have initial orders of 800 lbs. Once I have them met I will reopen the EBay store.

I will probably have the furnace up and running this week. I'll start a posting pictures etc. once I'm up and running

Art b

 

I'm very happy to hear from you Art. I was a little concerned honestly. So you've decided to up your game. I know that you utilize a second furnace for flux/degas operations. Are you going to continue that operation as well with a larger crucible furnace or is the one you have adequate? I'll be interested to see the design of your new tilting furnace. It sounds like it will be thirsty. I use a 50 gallon gas hot water tank for my oil. It's a fairly late model I got from a plumber friend. It was nice and clean with a defective controller so the tank is sound and just needed to be rinsed. I didn't have to peel the skin or anything. There are just enough threaded holes to accommodate my needs without any fabricating at all including site tube and pressure relief valve. I essentially just apply air into the hot side and push the oil up the dip tube and out the cold side through a spin-on automotive filter and then on to the furnace. It's probably far larger than I need and it wouldn't have been my first pick, but it's stationary and a smaller one would have taken up just as much floor space, so no harm done. It even has a built in drain so I can tap off settled water. It just seems like you'll be goofing around a lot filling your smaller tank. Just a thought.
I'm looking forward to pictures!

Pete

 

the tank is the kind that is used to drain oil in the repair shops, it is on wheels and my oil source is coming in 55 gallon drums I use the air system for the burners and feed a regulator on the tank, the siphon air feed is about 10 psi to the adjustable flow valve on the burners and the regulator on the tank is set for about 2 PSI, just enough to get the oil through the spin on filter and to the oil valves that are controlled by the servo motors. The servo valves are about 4 to 6 ft from the burners , I found when I fired the crucible furnace that any more then a couple lbs of air makes it hard to get control with the servo valves. I'll shoot some pics to day and get them up.

I also rebuilt the crucible furnace based on a small compressor tank it is also controlled by the servo motors. As the ingots molds are the same I use the same size crucibles based on the fire extinguishers, part of the reason for using the fire extinguishers is that their isn't a lag in heating the crucible back up and they only add a couple lbs to the weight of the aluminum, also when they fail it is a pin hole rather then the possibility of a catastrophic failure. they are also faster to handle. pics will show some of this.

Art b

 

Hell of a good way to get back up on the horse Art! I was wondering where you went. Can't wait to see the new build! Welcome back buddy!

 

I'm very interested in your design & pictures. I just picked up a 60 gallon hot water tank that I'm thinking of repurposing as a tilting aluminum scrapping furnace.

It is good to hear of your recovery. Happy melting!

 

Glad you're doing better Art. I want to see photos of this monster furnace. That's huge capacity you're making.

 

Hi Art, that's about as close a call as anyone can have and still tell the tale, I'm glad you're on the mend after such an event.

 

I'm having a problem that I could use some suggestions on a resolution to. On my smaller furnace i struggled with the refractory not standing up to well to the rough handling it would get from putting pieces into the furnace with engine block size pieces weigh 150 lbs, my old stand by of "Ceramic slip-sodium silicate and sand with refractory needles" isn't holding up and it is breaking at almost every use. I have tried mizzou but it didn't seem to work where it had to be troweled instead compacted, any suggestions I'll send a pic tomorrow.

Art B

 

do you have any pictures of what you got going on?

 

Matt have you seen the video of him with the tilting furnace pouring aluminum?

Hey Art, Can you make some kind of removable wooden plug so you don't have to trowel on the mizzou?

 

My tilter is built similar to yours only much smaller.(10 or 12 gallon?). I went with about an inch of castable so you may want to scale up thickness as needed. I built a square frame 1" thick about 16x16" inside dimensions, laid thick oversized plastic sheeting down and set the frame on it on my bench. I filled it with castable, rammed it and struck it off. I then removed the frame, lifted the slab by the edges of the plastic and laid it into my compressor body. It took several sections and I blended the edges of the sections together. I may have beveled the form edges so the sections would overlap, I don't remember. I just let the plastic sheeting burn out. I may have used somewhat smaller section sizes because I was working alone, again I don't remember, but it worked. I knew I was cheating a bit because castable wasn't really the right product for what I was doing. But my sections were reasonably thin and the stiff castable didn't really move once it was in place. There is a type of rammable refractory available - Blu-Ram by Vesuvius is what I use now - but I didn't have any at the time. It comes in a form more like plasticine- sort of - as opposed to the more fluid castable so it would be easier to lay into your tank without flowing. You could actually just ram it right into place since that's what it's made for.
Again yours may need more thickness and section size so you may need a helper and perhaps use plastic tarp material to place it.
I actually installed fiber insulation underneath the refractory so the process was a little more involved than what I wrote above, but that's the basic idea. If you're planning on insulating and want more information on how I did it let me know.

Pete

 

• 
  
  
  First fire of end burner on oil, the open lid is 24" by 30" that flame is about 25" long and is firing @ 75%
  
  
  
  What happens to the insulation after firing, it shrinks cracks and the falls off
  
  
  
  
  This is the control panel, the lower valves are oil ball valve that are driven
  by the servos either responding to t-couple signals or potentiometers.
  The upper valves are propane burner valves, the left items are a 30 amp 12 v supply for the lift actuators and a 12 to 5 v for the Arduino, relays and servos, what is not seen is the switch board with burner control switches this panel controls the fan actuators, and 3 multi fuel burners.
  
  I'm doing a melt tomorrow and will try to video the chaos of a fist run.
  
  Art B

 

Looks like an old CPU to me. Got a closer photo of the guts to that thing?

 

it runs on an Arduino mega2560 I'll take a closer pic tgomorrow