My name is Jeff Hinshaw and I am the machining instructor at the high school. I like to have my students see many different processes and this year I want to restart some small foundry operations. I will be looking for info on melting copper also.
Welcome Jeff. There are many metals and casting processes practiced by forum members here. You'll have to tell us more about the foundry equipment and projects you envision. We like pictures! Best, Kelly.
WOW, a high school that allows students near equipment that will hurt them if they don't use some common sense - I didn't think any of those existed anymore. I'll even bet that most of your students can make correct change without having to use a calculator. Keep up the good work.
Good to hear! When I was in high school general shop a half century ago we learned to cast aluminum and acetylene weld. Nobody I heard of ever got hurt from it. But as a lesson the teacher did leave a table saw blade embedded in the ceiling from an accident.
That's so cool. Your students are lucky, we certainly had nothing like that at my high school. Nor any machining. I took on a side gig for a few months a year or two ago at a local blacksmithing school though, showing beginners how to ram up and pour a small simple sand mold then de-gate and fettle their casting, in a 4 hour one-shot lesson. We had a lot of fun while it lasted; one of my students even has his own home foundry set up now. Another, a high school aged kid, signed up 3 times. I just wish there'd been enough other sign-ups (besides just Alexei again) to justify keeping casting on the menu for longer than 5 months... Most days when there was a class booked, I wound up with one student and 5 vacant molding benches. Good luck with it! I second Kelly's request for pix and info about your casting equipment... - Also Jeff
When I was in high school, freshman year in shop class was a quarter semester for each wood, metal (which included foundry), drafting, and automotive. My Dad had taught me to run all the machinery that could be found in a basic wood and metal shop by the time I was 12, so although I formally took all the high school drafting offered, all of the instructors in the other displines allowed me into their shops as I wished, and I did machine maintenance for them in return. It was great! I used to take orders for hardwood speaker baffles for 6x9 car stereo speakers during study hall and deliver them the next day. Now, there is no opportunity to cast, weld, run wood or metal working machinery, or even do basic automotive work, but there is cad/cam and robotics. Best, Kelly
I'm not sure whether that lack of opportunity is due to insurance/liability issues, or the lack of interest, or just plain lack of funds - but it's still sad. When I went to high school our Advanced Physics class performed an experiment on conservation of momentum, we fired a bullet into a block of wood suspended from the ceiling. I brought a .22 cal. single shot rifle to school, on the school bus. The driver asked me what was going on so I explained it to him, and he just waved, me on. You try that now and probably everyone in the physics class would be expelled and the teacher would be fired.
I have heard talk about reinstating such classes because there is a serious shortage of people in the trades, but no action thusfar, at least in my local. Maybe the OP can comment. It appears his school has machining and soon to have casting. Speaking of the OP, Jeff, if you are "restarting" foundry ops, does that mean some foundry equipment may already exist? Best, Kelly
Every year, one of the science teachers in my high school would demonstrate a grease fire to his grade nine classes, he would have all of the students stand around the perimeter of the class room, in the center of the room, he would put on fire resistant gear and over a Bunsen burner, heat about 250ml of cooking oil up to its smoking point, set it alight, then throw in a large beaker of water, the result was an instantaneous, very large fire ball that almost fully engulfed the teacher and scared the crap out of everyone else in the room. Every year he did that in the same classroom, that classroom had a permanent large black scorch mark in the ceiling. This demonstration didn't really have anything to do with the other material taught in that class so one of my classmates asked him why he did that, he responded that his wife once had a very close call attempting to extinguish a grease fire and that he thought the dangers of a grease fire was something we needed to learn about. I can assure you, it was a lesson well learned indeed, over the years hundreds of his students would have seen this and I'm quite sure none of them EVER attempted to put out a grease fire with water after seeing that. I wonder if a demonstration of that nature would be allowed today, I hope so but I suspect not.
We had one fun science teacher too. 6'7" with bright red hair, think Beaker from the Muppet show. One year during an assembly he and a bunch of student volunteers in white lab coats lined up a bunch of 2L bottles full of Bunsen burner gas and lit them off in time to the 1812 overture as it played over the speakers. Some of them made it all the way to the back of the auditorium! They never let him do that again, and I'm not sure there was really any lesson intended, but it sure was a good show... Happy to say the local high school where I live now actually does have a nice assortment of well equipped shop classes and computer labs as well as the usual academics and arts etc. No foundry though.
