oven to melt aluminium

[@Turbo]

ok bear with me a little. please gloss over some of the bits on why this is a silly idea just wanting to hear your thoughts. after a chat in the pub sort of thing.

so scrap engines/gearboxes quite alot of steel and alloy mix of course aluminium gets a much better price if the steel is removed.

so a furnace/smelting pot. obv not going to be run by oil or gas. coal is very hard to control temps. so I am thinking waste oil as a fuel source. any alternatives?

so probably going to need a few burners need about 700 degrees c that should be hot enough for most alloys?

now the size. doing 10 engines and gearboxes at a time would be great but that is going to be about the size of my living room so lets say 5

would a steel cube be up to the job? what about using a decommissioned bit of industry plant and modifying it?

need a tap at the bottom to let the aluminium out

let me hear what you think chaps

 

[Pete.]

A sledge hammer is cheaper, quicker, less messy and not going to burn your house down.

 

[garethp]

Have a look at http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/

Loads of info

 

[@Turbo]

under first inspection a sledge hammer sounds like it will work but I bet you 3 easter eggs if I give you a ford gearbox a sledgehammer and 30 min you would not get the shafts out of it.

 

[bigegg]

just build a bonfire out of old pallets, the melt will pool at the base.
you do know that scrap yards won't buy home-made ingots, tho, don't you?

 

[@Turbo]

that would be pretty simple I could just do it in a field.

no didn't know that

why so?

 

[@Turbo]

Have a look at http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/

Loads of info

that is pretty cool. more or less all the info I need.

might it be better to make a concrete room with slatted floor to allow the melt to drip.

extraction fans and a couple of burners. I will have to have a word with a few chaps at the uni sounds like an ideal situation for some sort or explosion. may need extraction I have a 24" axial fan I could duct in.

 

[rtbcomp]

Bear in mind that most scrappies don't like taking melted down metals because they don't know what it was and there could always be something hidden within an ingot.

 

[brightspark]

was it the beer talking dont bother. it doesnt sound like a plan

 

[@Turbo]

 

[brightspark]

pmsl;

 

[captain-destructo]

have a look at http://www.alloyavenue.com/vb/showthread.php?6759-Stack-melter-v1.0-success!

could be your cheapest option

you may have to sign up to see the photos tho

 

[bigegg]

I was told that some, "itinerant road-menders" shall we say?, were nicking beer kegs and melting them down, hence they were "recommended" to ban home-made ingots by the local constabulary.

 

[DrNik]

scrapyards will take ingots after they have had them tested, and use waste engine oil to heat up your engine, blast an engine face on instead of in a crucible and as they said on the other site have a hole in the bottom with water filled container and it will be more like pellets, the professional have a machine that chews up engine into different piles

 

[madkayaker]

The scrapy I use has built his own ingot furnace it runs on waste oil and old vacuum cleaners (as blower) it then has a rear tapping hole and a length of girder that he slides molds along for con casting.



Will try to get some photos next time but its only a lined box with fire in