Tried to import crucibles from India this week.

So the Indian Company I bought my silicon carbide crucible from has put out a video of their factory, it actually looks pretty good. The video was posted around the same time as I bought the crucible and would have been handy to see the factory beforehand. I could be wrong but I think they share their address with Vesuvius India. I had the crucible still in a plastic bag in the cardboard shipping box and it went partially underwater, I think the bag protected it but I'll still oven dry it after the last wet crucible explosion debacle.

 

I too have encountered the old problem of sourcing just about anything here on Australias east coast - or on any coast for that matter. That includes decent crucibles. I have always purchased mine from folks in the USA whom I find to
be honest, trustworthy and providers of excellent customer service. I have found that to to be the case across a vast range of products and industries for 40 years.

I do agree the video looks OK - very similiar to a wide range of videos on Alibaba, Aliexpress, Temu and indeed Indiamart. In my own very humble opinion, for what it is worth, I would venture that the Indians don't even have the
manufacturing expertise of the Chinese. And I have been caught many times trying to save with cheap chinese products. Across many industries.

I read on these forums some time ago from one of the wise men (regular posters whose opinions I value) that the two things one shouldn't skimp on with regard to price are refactory and crucibles.

Just my two bob and I really hope the crucible works out - I feel your pain when it comes to sourcing anything here.

 

My Morgan Salamander Super crucibles have a "Made in India" (as opposed to the "Made in Japan" of the 1980's Morgan crucibles) sticker so they seem to be capable of a quality crucible. I notice in the video MASC were using roller press forming and isostatic pressing just like the German made Morgan crucibles so I think they may have the edge on some of the other Indian craft workshop crucible makers seen in other videos on this forum. They also seemed to be running QC materials tests in their in-house laboratory. The fact they fired the nested crucibles inside a dummy crucible filled with some material like silicon carbide and then fired again after glaze impregnation seems to match name brand manufacture.

Certainly a lot better than any Chinese crucible I've seen so far, I have some photos of a Chinese crucible that cost decent money and turned out to bog standard pottery clay complete with lumps of reused grog mixed in and finished with a thin layer of graphite rubbed into the surface. The lack of glaze caused it to fail after ten melts or so.


https://forums.thehomefoundry.org/index.php?threads/new-crucibles.1602/#post-40482

https://forums.thehomefoundry.org/index.php?threads/my-cheap-clay-graphite-crucible.491/

 

Yep as I say - just my two bobs worth.

I have visited India on a number of occasions in the past mainly in conjunction with the Royal Enfeild factory, amongst others, and am somewhat familiar with
Indian manufacturing first-hand. And, no, I have never/would never purchase a chinese crucible so am not familiar.

I think you might be drawing rather a long bow attempting to equate Japanese and German manufacturing to what actually occurs on the ground in India.

Yep I am sure they fired filled with something like silicon carbide

As I say I do really hope it works out for you.


Charlie

 

One interesting thing to note in the original video, at the 2:46 minute mark, they use what looks like phenolic resin and a grout mixer to mix the kiln dried clay graphite pellets and resin. This gives a fairly strong unfired crucible that once fired gives a carbon bonded clay graphite crucible. They have a video of an AC25 crucible in iron service: it's hot enough that the foundry workers are adding scrap iron to the melt to cool it a bit before they pour. According to their brochure the C in AC25 indicates it's an isostatically pressed carbon bonded crucible.