Grab & Pour tongs

I converted our two man tongs to Grab & Pour so you never set the crucible down except in the furnace. Wanted to work alone sometimes so I made this new set of tongs that will let me grab the crucible out of the furnace and pour.

 

I think I understand how this works.. The loop goes over the rim of the furnace and allows you to close on the crucible?
Looks pretty clever.

 

Looks like a loose band is slid over the short handle on one jaw to hold it closed. That should work.

 

The loops also positions the centre of mass at or near the centre of rotation, that should make for a smooth easy pour. Clever indeed!

 

best part. No extra man needed to run "the dumb end of the stick"

 

Looks great!

 

Thanks for all the positive comments. I have 4 crucibles and they are all slightly different shape so I hoe this accommodates all of the them. I welded this up at my job shop which is 160 miles from home so I won't know about the others until tomorrow. I am not real happy about the hold down tab at the top. It doesn't need to move except to adjust for how far down the crucible sits in the ring. To pick the crucible you just open the ring and drop straight down on it. I left the pipe thread on the handle as it may make sense to add weight at the outboard end to balance it better.

These pictures show the previous 2 man version I made from the 2 man tongs that came with the furnace. So if I want to do a pour of something heavy like brass or bronze I am all set. NO comments about safety gear, I know! That was absolutely the first attempt and now I am getting more appropriate gear besides respirators, and face shields.

 

Some pictures of how tongs work. I see I need to modify slightly to get more clearance getting onto and off of the crucible in the furnace because the furnace is quite tight.

If you look at the right side of the furnace where the exhaust comes out you can see the little preheat rack I added so metal waiting to go in can be heated in the hot exhaust.

 

That looks like a pretty effective setup. Some sort of t-handle near the end of the rod will be quite helpful for pouring.

Pete

 

Nice loking furnace. Yes, I can see that clearance is pretty tight.

I am curious to know from what material the black rim of the furnace is made. It looks like it is in four segments?

Denis

 

actually I am thinking elbow and vertical pipe. The extra weight will help balance the crucible weight and having the center of mass above the handle will allow me to move the center of mass closer to the center of pouring rotation, and provide a handle.

 

When we painted the furnace I expected that edge which is steel to get hot, so we used a high temperature black paint.

 

The furnace is a MIFCO #10.

 

What'd that set you back?

 

Looking at the line drawings on the Mifco, it appears they are not providing for a plinth. Or is that not correct? And the second question I have is how far inside the burner tube does air mix with gas? It looks like it could be several inches from the orifice entering the furnace. That makes sense to me, but I would love to know if that is true.

It is also noteworthy that Mifco explains they use segmental side walls and lid sections to avoid cracking. My next furnace will have as thin as practical castable segmental walls and lid sections backed up by wool.

Gary, you are our "mole" in the Mifco enterprise. Much to be learned from them I hope. Neat that you have a commercial furnace. I suspect you are the only one on this forum with one.

Denis

 

There is one other interesting bit of info in the Mifco online brochure stating that their iron melting furnace that takes a 20 to 30 crucible puts out 750,000 BTU per hour. Compare that to my furnace (typical of many) in which I burn diesel at just under 3 gal per hour. One gallon of diesel has 139,000 BTU. So, they are putting out a fair bit more than half again as much heat at least in theory. You can be sure I am not extracting anything like the full heat contained in a gallon of diesel. Balance that with the weight of their furnace being 900 pounds vs my lightweight around 100 pounds. Interesting stuff. I guess I am glad to see that they are not putting out ten times as much heat as we are.

Denis

 

Dont forget Denis, Im sure there is a fair bit of exaggeration going on with mifco. Even fancy professional furnace companies arent immune to a little locker room prick measuring.

I think for what 99% of us have assembled on shoe string budgets, we kick some major ass in the heating department.

 

A 6" long piece of 1" steel pipe welded on pointing straight down (pointing straight down with the crucible is in the upright position) where your right hand is would work wonders for pour control and hand strain.

Edit:
Looks like I am a day late and a dollar short......this was already discussed above.
Well, that is my 2 cents worth anyway.




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The price was right, the wife of a friend that passed away recently gave my grandson the whole setup. Furnace, tongs, pouring ring, 4 #10 crucibles with two bottom pour design, pyrometer. Four different sizes of flasks in steel, cast iron, and aluminum, plus about 40 lbs of Zamak. She offered us the 12kw ceramic kiln, and the gas fired forge too, but we don’t have room for all that.

My friend was my high school mechanical drafting teacher that I became friends with about 10 years later. His kids worked for me while they were in college. He is the second good friend I watched waste away from brain cancer. Terrible way to go.

The Mifco website suggests this size furnace is about $3500 today and the tongs are like $750 more. I saw the furnace on Ebay a couple of days ago for $750.

Anybody interested, the forge is available. Gas fired with all the controls like the furnace. I suggested $500 to someone that expressed interest and they never contacted me again. Just trying to help my friends wife. Shortly after he died she fell breaking both legs and her wrist! Spent months in hospitals and rehab.

 

I’m happy to measure up the burner, really simple. It is rated 250,000 btu and the propane regulator I bought was 175,000 and tank pressure drops fast. So we have two tanks and two regulators and we can see we get full fire now.