As a total novice who has just built my first naturally aspirated burner I am interested in learning by how much the forced air systems can reduce melt times ( aluminium takes my present setup about 20 mins).
20 minutes ain't bad. Subsequent heats should be much faster so it seems like you're getting what you need. Forced air will really help with larger volumes and will be "strongly advised" when you go for copper alloys. I wont go so far as to say NA wont work for brass/bronze, but it'll be an uphill battle. That's a neat looking burner. I tried to find the chap you mentioned in your intro thread but had no luck. Could you post a link? Pete
It's all down to physics: to burn more fuel in a given size furnace you need more air. The close analogy would be to go from a naturally aspirated piston engine to a supercharged engine. You won't get a doubling in performance (unlike engines) as there are many other factors involved such as the latent heat of fusion (energy to melt a given metal), thermal conductivity of the crucible and metal etc.. I help out at a small non ferrous foundry where the forced air furnace can melt an AX30 sized crucible in 9-20 minutes, running it too fast just wastes energy as the amount of heat that can be absorbed by the crucible and metal, is more or less fixed.
Hey Pete, you need work on your google foo, it took me all of 10 seconds to find him, here the link to Daniel Moss' youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ3rO8Nb9I1p9Wh_lQ6ebew/videos and here the burner video:
