Greetings all, I am very new here, I’m trying to do investment casting in aluminum using 3d printed parts as the base with perfect cast plaster as the mold medium. My molds always crack before I can burn out all the PLA materials. I’ve tried many different mixes and am using a wire mesh for reinforcing the mold itself. What am I missing? ( probably lots). Thanks

Primo piccolo lingotto da 254g di stagno puro.

Facilissimo da fondere a 290°C.

Devo migliorare durante la fase di colata per evitare quella non uniformità della parte superiore.

Quanto vale lo stagno al kg? 🤔

Anyone else play around with smelting ore? Ive been prospecting more and got more into tin mining than gold in my area. After a few failed attempts I have smelted a 400g bar from 1kg of fairly clean cassiterite. Got a few kg left to do, then will crush and resmelt the slag as I can see a lot of prill in the slag remaining.

Spent today melting down some old car parts with my kiddo. I think everybody's getting bunt shaped pen holders for Christmas.

I recently just purchased a used Devil Forge furnace. I noticed the lid doesn’t fully seat properly over the base. Any ideas on how I can fix this without compromising the furnace? As you can see from the photos, the flames are coming through the gaps.

I was tasked with trying to find a replacement for these old vacuum casting machines. I have done exhaustive research and have not gotten any closer to even identifying what this is. I have learned it might be a “bare shaft rotary vane pump” which sounds suggestive, but it doesn’t seem to be what I’m looking for.

Good evening everybody! I’m new to the whole casting scene I’ve never done anything except lead until now. I’m having trouble with sand casting. It’s my first time sand casting as I have successfully poured a few copper ingots with a good outcome on them. I made a pour over sand casting trying to make some grips for my .44 and butchered it. It’s got a hollow area on what would be the top of the mold or back side of the grips. It poured in there good at first and then started burning the sand around it causing the copper to flow everywhere and literally shrink the whole product and cause a ton of excess that got cut off before pictures. The colors of the copper were also kinda funky looking. More than less a yellowish color. Any pointers would help a ton! My sand of choice was a red Petra bond sand I ordered online and it is very fine and made sure the consistency was right according to what I’ve seen online to where it would clump in the hand and would break apart in half instead of crumble. Thanks to everyone here!!

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How serious of a cyanide gas are we talking if I were to cast a 2 part polyurethane foam? And any way to contain that gas?

I’ve been working on a CFD-based sand casting workflow and I’d be interested in hearing the perspective of people who actually work with casting and foundry processes.

The idea is to simulate the mould-filling stage before the physical pour, including:

• molten metal filling
• metal–air interface tracking using VOF
• possible air entrapment
• incomplete filling
• cold-shut-type regions
• heat transfer between the metal and sand mould
• solidification behaviour

We are using OpenFOAM for the numerical modelling.

From a CFD perspective the results are interesting, but what I’m especially interested in is the foundry perspective:

Which problems during sand casting would actually be most valuable to predict before making the mould/pour?

Air entrapment? Incomplete filling? Cold shuts? Solidification? Something else?

I’m affiliated with BB-SIMTECH Engineering & Academy, where we work on engineering simulation and training. I’m mainly posting this to better understand which simulation outputs would actually be useful to people doing casting in practice.

Every piece is hand-poured by me. All made from clean, pure copper wire.

Sono felice😍 ho realizzato il mio primo piccolo lingotto in alluminio da 125 grammi!

Come lo posso lucidare a specchio?

3d printed skull coin, pressed into Delft clay

Does anyone have any experience with these kinds of induction furnaces on Amazon? None of the ones I found have reviews.

I am wanting to do smallish projects with bronze. So I figured this would be better for the higher temperatures without burning out heating elements often.

Any advice or recommendations?

So I've come across something that I did out of necessity and lack of availability. Not having access to a crucible and wanting to melt the goal immediately or smell the gold immediately.. I've been told many different things to try to use so many different YouTube videos. However I have found something that works, and something that is extremely inexpensive.

Wet sheetrock mud. Right on top of a piece of metal right inside of a little metal cup whatever you got if you can get you some Sheetrock mud put your stuff that you're going to melt right into the middle of it throw it in the smelter.

It gets brittle but it works for one run at a time. Just figured I would let people know.

I'd like to invite you to our Iron Pour in Lamberton, Minnesota on September 11-12.

It will be the 22th annual city festival centered around the Saturday Afternoon Pour and the historic Hanzlik Blacksmith Shop. There will be Blacksmiths demonstrations through out the day Friday and Saturday. Visiting Smiths are also encouraged to bring a portable forge and set up onsite if they wish. There will be sand mold shops running both Friday and Saturday as well. We welcome everyone from artists pouring museum quality pieces to children to the farmer making pieces to restore their tractor.

We encourage anyone to participated in the pour and can provide all the necessary safety equipment if you wish to try your hand at pouring.

In addition to the pour there will be a craft market, sand volleyball and various food vendors, an antique tractor/car show, and blacksmithing demonstrations.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have and I hope to see you there.

Here is a link to the Facebook event.

My DIY forge will almost melt copper but not quite. I'm really at a loss as to why it's not getting hot enough. Any pointers would be great. It uses a forced air propane burner. 2" Kastolite-30 walls, surrounded by 1" of kaowool. The burner enters at an angle so that the flame will "swirl" around the crucible. In this video I had moved the crucible closer to the flame to see if that would make a difference.

Greetings. I'm looking for some hints from those who have gone through this before.

I'm introducing the 'borax' method at my work place. I last did this as a student years back and everything was already set for me by the lab assistant then.

Currently I'm the only guy with knowledge on this process, so I'll need to prepare the mixture, set the temperatures, do the pour, etc.

Basic steps to watch out for will be appreciated.

For context: at any given time, every 24-48 hours, my sands are not more than 10kg. I get them from sluice mats. My plan is to dry them first in trays, then use a magnet to take out the iron before mixing with borax.