Casting aluminum

[jaywood]

Does anyone here cast?

At work I do a lot of tooling. The parts get sent out (made in repro first) and get casted in aluminum. It gets pretty expensive, however. So I thought about making a furnace to melt down scrap aluminum, and then casting our own parts. We have a lot of left over tools laying around (LOTS of scrap alu) that could be turned into new, usable tools.

Looking for furnace ideas, and thoughts/opinions on everything else.

Thank you r3v.

[kwill22]

I say go for it. I don't know exactly how everything's gonna be done or whats involved with getting the moulds but I'm interested. I'm sure there's more experience on R3V.

"where is everybody"-in my Herbert the pervert voice

[euro2fast4u]

lol you say go for it but you have no idea whats involved with casting.

you need more then likely a ceramic crucible that you can melt the aluminum and a heating supply probably propane. you'll need shit to pick up the crucible as it will be very hott. are you just trying to pour bricks of aluminum and then machine it down?

youll also need to make sure there there is a minimum amount of impurities when your done casting as excess gas and minerals can cause weak parts.

[m73m95]

lol you say go for it but you have no idea whats involved with casting.

you need more then likely a ceramic crucible that you can melt the aluminum and a heating supply probably propane. you'll need shit to pick up the crucible as it will be very hott. are you just trying to pour bricks of aluminum and then machine it down?

youll also need to make sure there there is a minimum amount of impurities when your done casting as excess gas and minerals can cause weak parts.

Depends on what you're making.

You can melt lead in an old cast iron pot on the stove, if you want to practice making molds, or some test pieces.

You don't need to worry about impurities of aluminum unless you're making structural pieces. I would stay away from e30 hubs for your first few attempts. Some decorative shit...melt and pour to your hearts content.

Very good (beginner) site.

[kwill22]

lol you say go for it but you have no idea whats involved with casting.

If that was directed towards me. Right after I said go for it I said but I don't know whats involved sooooo :p

I'm not one to tell people not to do somthing constructive that they want to do as long as they're willing to do all the work involved which it seems that's why he's here asking. So like I said go for it.

[Massimo]

No reason why not. The only issue as mentioned before is QC of material. there are plenty of articals on making your own blast furnace on google so good luck.

[dannyyisntt]

My uncle does this. I'll ask him about it if I see him over the 4th

[Fusion]

Search youtube. I've watched lots of videos with small DIY furnaces for melting gold and other metals.

[jaywood]

Not making structural pieces...just molds for molding plastic sheets.

Going to do more research on this tonight! Thanks for the comments so far guys!

[AndrewBird]

To put it simply, there is a LOT more to it then you think there is. Why do you think it is so expensive to get done?

[gearheadE30]

An SAE Baja team cast an aluminum gearbox this year. I think it ran them $6000 all said and done, starting from scratch.

[mechdonald]

One of the best threads on the internet... well for this sort of thing

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?4662626-The-complete-guide-on-casting-parts&daysprune=-1

Make sure you have some time set aside - this guy is ingenious.

[scottinAZ]

if it can be done in a high school industrial arts class, you can do it yourself as well.
as others have said, the furnace and the crucible will be the hard parts. other than that, some petrobond sand, and mold forms, you should be in business.

[Sagaris]

Having done aluminum casting before, I can say that cast aluminum is some wimpy crap unless you study up on metallurgy and learn how to heat treat/case harden it. It isn't that difficult to do, but it makes all the difference.

[deutschman]

You can use a small air/gas tank with the top cut off along with some heat proof cement. There are a ton of YouTube vids on this as well as how and what to makes molds out of and so on.