Help...I dont know why this doesnt work

It looks like it needs more gas pressure to me....but I am but a greenhorn newbie. I bet that new regulator torques you right up though.LOL

 

Well Amazon has lost my new regulator...so now im waiting on a new one to be shipped.....ugh.

@DavidF
Im just posting this picture for a visual reference for anyone else that might read this, but the part you said you drilled out of the regulator I believe I have marked on the below picture.
(Im a visual learner)

 

Speaking of regulators - what sort of pressure range is best for 1) forced air burners, and 2) aspirated burners?

The former type needs sufficient volume,with pressure being a secondary concern (is this true ?).

The second needs pressure and volume. Trouble is, I'm not sure how much pressure. 60 psi seems high, but I've neer run an aspirating burner.

 

Mine is naturally aspirated with no restrictions on air flow. It is completely open except for a cross in the back that the tip screws into. I seem to get hot faster at less than 12psi..anything over that seems to push the heat out of the furnace. Mine seems to be the exception. Any extra air or gas just seems to be excessive and will also extinguish the flame when I put the lid on. I have had it cherry red and maintained a flame up to 17 or 18 with the lid on but the flames were excessively shooting out the top. At around 8 mine barely has flames out the top and seems to heat much faster. My gauges might be wrong. They are new but I have not tried anything to test them.

 

As Jeff pointed out, you don't have it plumbed like the plans show. Replumb it to match the plans and it will work better but consider the following points:

1. You are using a siphon nozzle and aren't siphoning anything. The best you can hope for is to blow propane through the siphon nozzle (which you said you aren't doing now) and suck air into your future blower connection. If you are just dumping propane into the side of the burner you will get the lazy flame in your video. I'm surprised you haven't fed propane out your blower inlet and had a fire there.

2. It is really easy to build a nice naturally aspirated propane burner with most of what you have. Get rid of the siphon nozzle, hook the propane to the oil connection, just run the inside tube past the blower tee then put some type of damper on the blower inlet. You can suck a lot of air without a nice orifice in you oil now propane line and you can get a stable flame in your furnace. You can use masking tape to vary the air flow into the blower connection as you play around and learn about your burner.

3. Get a hair dryer or leaf blower and use forced air like Jeff said, it is much easier to learn to get a stable flame when you can control air flow and propane flow. Use cardboard over the blower inlet to control the flow.

4. When you get comfortable you can reinstall your oil atomizer and burn oil. I bought an atomizing nozzle but have never used it because I tried a simple drip burner first and it works too well to add complications.

5. I recommend you not alter a gas regulator or any other commercially produced gas appliance. Any alterations are potentially dangerous and you must understand all the ramifications of modifications. In the worst case, you burn your house down and your insurance company calls your actions negligence and refuses to pay, or they turn you in for insurance fraud and you get jail time.

 

I think 10 psi is plenty for an aspirating burner. The critical factors are having a reasonable venturi shape and 10 diameters downstream for mixing. With a generous orifice 5 psi is probably plenty. I use an 0.045" MIG tip for an orifice and it's a bit small so 10 to 15 psi pushes a lot more propane through.

For a forced air burner you just need enough pressure to overcome the blower discharge to move enough gas into the burner tube. I think 1 to 2 psi is plenty. The problem is always volume through a low pressure regulator. A high pressure regulator will let a lot more volume through and then you can kill the pressure at the burner with a needle valve to let just enough propane in.

 

UPDATE:
So I finally got my new regulator in. It is a 0-30PSI regulator and had to do some tweaking, but got it to run steady at 1300F to finish the curing session on my forge.



This has of course raised some more questions for me on my part ... some of which might have already been touched on previously in this post.
So when I say I had to do some tweaking...what I had to do was I got the initial flame going...got the foundry warmed up to about 250-300f...then at my next curing step I needed to take the temp up to 500f...pretty much had to open everything up and let it go for this, but I got it up to the right temp

...on the next step I needed to get it to 1100f and hold the temp for an hour or so. To do this I tried using the air compressor line, but this just blew everything out...so I completely unhooked this from the equation. I ended up adding a hair dryer to the blower port on the bottom of the burner and got to about 750f...this was with the hair dryer just kinda angle resting on the blower port. I initially had an issue when I put the hair dryer (on low) flush with the blower port it blew the flame out. I fiddle with everything some more...finally got the hair dryer running on high flush against the blower port, the propane regulator at about 8-10psi, the air compressor port (without the compressor hooked up) about a 1/8 of the way open, and the propane knob on the burner at about 1/2 open and was able to get the 1300f.

That is a lot of numbers and explaining...if a diagram would help let me know and ill jot one out.

Here are the new questions I have come up with:

1) I feel like I have an over complicated burner...as this point has been touched on in the previous posts. I feel like I should redesign the burn as I dont foresee myself using the oil fuel source much if at all. I also am not sure if my burner is the most fuel efficient as I felt I had to run it high just to get to 1300f. What burner design would everyone recommend? This might be better answers after reading the other questions.

2) I was not expecting to have to run the hair dryer at all and was hoping to get to 1200f (aluminum melting temp) on its own as I thought I had seen other YouTubers melting cans using a design similar to this (see below) without any blower attachment.

I thought blowers would only be necessary for melting items like Iron...or extra extreme temps. What types of temps should I be expecting with no forced air?

3) I am mainly looking at melting lead...which I know can be done on a stove if needed, but my company had a lot of scrap piece of this cable that I am looking to scavenge for my projects...

I believe I have found the correct data sheet on this cable and the inner core appears to be "Fully Annealed Stranded Bare Copper Class K". I thought copper had a melting point just shy of 2000f. Im not really sure if my burner can get that high right now...or if I just need to crank the psi on the propane and increase the hair dryer speed to get to these temps?
Odd thing is that the data sheet also states this cable has a "Temp. Rating of 221 Degrees F", Im not really sure what that temp rating is, but im sure its not the melting temp. Knowing what im trying to melt...might also dictate what style burner I should probably be aiming to build as well. Suggestions?

4) How long does it take (est) for most people to get their foundry to aluminum melting temps? Im am sure this all depends on size of the foundry and all, but does everyone just strike up the burner and let it roar all open and get to temp as quick as possible?

5) In addition to the above picture of the burner in question 2...I have considered that design as well as I like the air flow control plate on the back.
I have also looked at this one...im not sure if this can pull in more air on its own with the two opening on the side or if a blower can be added to those ports...just trying to figure out what would work for that cable mentioned above.


And looked at these devices as it looks like just a precast piece for the burner in question two.


6) lastly, I am sure this is probably because I ran the propane for such a long time, but I started to get frost over the tank. I have read this is ok and not to worry about it, but do most people run their propane long\fast enough that it frost over? What insulation does anyone use to combat this? Has anyone tried putting the propane in a bucket of water to keep it from frosting over?

Thanks for everyone's time and guidance.

 

How did the furnace tolerate the firing? Any cracking?

At the risk of sounding not-nice:
You need to run your furnace outside or at least in a hugely ventillated area. Like loud voices, furnaces belong pretty much outside. So does pouring. I don't care what they do on YouTube. Take it outside.

What you have is a furnace. It lives at a foundry.

Yes, over complicated. While I admire Brian's work some of it is entirely over complicated. See his lifting tong video. Jesus. All it takes is one thing to be f'ed up and the thing, whatever it is, won't work. How he's getting that burner to operate is beyond me. It has to have something to do with the flame holder/turbulator and the spacing of the nozzle from the end of the pipe. Note in his video that his successful demonstration is using version 3 of the turbulator. I have to wonder how much trial and error was involved in these three iterations and what the performance issues were. As has previously been discussed, propane requires certain circumstances in order to burn in the way we need it to. Simply putting it in the same vicinity with air isn't enough. There has to be the right amount of each and the mixture needs to be fairly homogenous. Note that in the burners you show above that the introduction of the 2 gases occurs at the back end of the tube. The pressurized gas coming into the tube right at the reduction point sucks air in. (Read up on "Venturi"). The air and gas have time and enough turbulance to mix but are traveling faster than the flame speed that the mixture will produce. As soon as the mixture hits the end of the pipe it slows down enough for the flame to burn. That's why the flame doesn't burn in the tube. If it does, and it can, then the gas pressure is likely too low. I think Brian's burner works because the propane and air are sufficiently mixing at the end of the pipe aided by the flame holder before it makes it into the furnace. Quite a balancing act.
It wouldn't take much more effort and you appear to have all of the fittings to make a Reil burner. Plans are online. That may be enough to melt your copper, but others have produced propane burners with blowers here that will get you there. The nozzle needs to go if you're only burning propane. But don't discard it, you'll probably use it later.
You seem to have a great supply of copper. The temp rating certainly pertains to the insulation not the metal, so go for it.
I didn't cover many of your questions but I hope this helps.
By the way, take it outside.

Pete

 

I forgot to glance at it before I left for work this morning to check, but I dont think there was much of any cracking. I think it might be due to the amount of time it has been sitting unused in my garage. I have been working on building this on and off since 2018...After I built it I did a pre cure where I got everything to 500f, but then found the issue with my burner and it got set aside...so it has sat for 2 years just drying out on it own.

He still hasn't made these available for purchase yet...

No need to feel bad about this...I agree. Just FYI....my garage door was open with a fan blowing fresh air in. I just couldnt take it outside due to weather. I checked the flame every 10-15min to make sure everything was working correctly and at the same time limited my time directly in the fumes. I thought this was fine for just curing at this point, but for sure I will be doing all of my melting\pouring\ and future project with this on the other side of the garage door.

Thanks for the recommendation Reil burner and your advise... everything seem to be much like you said... more of a balancing act then what I expected it to be and wanted to make sure I wasn't doing anything too far off the wall.

 

Brian will never sell those tongs, probably a liability thing. It's not worth the few bucks he would make when someone goes and melts a foot off. I thought I liked them once upon a time and even saw someone here make a pair, but what I use works just fine. Over complicating the hell out of something isn't my style. I like fast, easy and cheap!

 

Are there any benefits between these two designs?

My best guess is since you can adjust the air flow on the right burner you can stabilize the temp at different ranges...where the burner on the left would need to run same temp\psi every time?
Is that correct and are there any other benefits to one over the other?

 

I will try and get pics of mine tonight. Super simple to build and works great for me. The only thing I had to manufacture was the end to hold the mig tip in place. I made a very crude and fast model to show you kind of what it looks like. Im in a hurry so forgive the crappiness of the model.LOL Four holes to mount it to the outside edge of the pipe adapter and one in the middle for tip....then cut out intake holes.

 

So here is an update to my progress...

I built the Reil Propane Burner per his specs. I used a 1-1/2' x 3/4' reducing coupler to a 8" x3/4" nipple to a 3/4" coupling. I added a air gate at the back as well to control that. For the nozzle inside the 8" pipe I have a 0.030 welding nozzle tip. I read somewhere that this was the same size hole diameter as the #60 drill bit used for ejecting the propane from.


Here were my results....
With the top on the burner and the propane at 10 psi and the air gate completely open I was not getting the big whooshing afterburner noise I was expecting.
I put my temp gauge in the burner hole and had it suspended roughly in the middle of the air column trying to get a reading. I don't know if this is the proper place to take a reading in a burner and would like some feedback on this. The picture below makes it look like the temp probe is coming straight in, but it is angled up and the tip sits roughly half way up the column.


With my probe I was getting 800-900 degrees...trying to figure out what changes I needed to make I found that if I took the lid off half way, my probe would go to 1100 degrees...I then found out that if I removed the top all together I could get a steady 1300 degrees at 7-10psi. If I went higher or lower on the psi everything started to cool down. My goal right now is to get a steady 1600 degrees or higher.

I was able to melt about 30-40 cans last night and got almost 0 aluminum from it...it looked to be all slag. I got a small pool, but barely anything to really talk about, but it sounds like this is normal with cans. Unfortunatly I ran out of proane at this point and had to put everything away.

I am curious if since aluminum melts at 1220 degrees and since im just over the melting threshhold...did the low temp cause some of my lack of pooled aluminum?

It seems as if I am starving the flame of oxygen. I have two ideas on what I should change and would like some advise...

I feel like this burner might be too small for this size of a furnace. So first thought is to rebuild this again using a 1" or 1-1/2" pipe allowing more air to travel through.

My second though is perhaps I should change out my nozzle tip to a 0.035 welding tip. I know this will not produce more air, but will allow more propane in the tube and see how the mixture needs change.

Thoughts?

 

You're not getting enough air, opening the furnace tells you that.

 

I've got some questions before I open my mouth.
More info is needed.
Looks like you have a 2" tuyere and a 3/4" burner, did you fill the void with anything?
Did you play with the air aperture with the lid on?
That's how you tune the burner to the furnace and also to the metal being melted.
Can you shoot a video of it?