Friday, December 23, 2011

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Building A Hobby Crucible Furnace

!±8± Building A Hobby Crucible Furnace

Efficient melting of metal in the hobby foundry requires a simple, but well
designed, easy to operate melting furnace. A well-designed furnace does not necessarily mean it will be expensive to build, or that it is complicated to construct and operate.

If you're just beginning your metal casting journey, there will be a multitude of questions that will need to be answered; and if you follow some simple methods, your learning curve will be dramatically reduced.

A well-built furnace will take you another step along the path to being able to maintain an important piece of equipment for your hobby foundry set up. Without an efficient furnace your hobby metal casting experience could well be one of total frustration & disappointment.

It is possible to build a furnace from scrap materials found around the workshop. This is not to say that it will look trashy, or poorly made, the point being made here is that you do not need to build everything from new materials. The only material you will need to buy is the special high temperature resistant refractory to line the furnace walls with, plus a few brass connectors from the local plumber for the gas feed line and some brass rod to custom-make your own special gas jet for the burner. The rest you can quite easily make yourself if you have metal working skills.

One of the biggest problems the hobby foundry worker has to overcome,
is to acquire the knowledge to build a high-energy output burner, the subject of burners can raise many arguments amongst hobby foundry workers, and there is a straightforward solution to building an efficient burner, by following simple instructions any practical person can fabricate an efficient burner that will quickly melt metals such as aluminium and bronze without effort. The process to build a high output furnace burner is really quite simple, but there are a few small parts that need to be machined on a lathe.

If you don't have the luxury of a lathe in your workshop, perhaps a friend
can help you out. Although, many hobby metal workers do own a metal
lathe these days, it is almost a must have for the average home engineer
in this ever-increasing DIY age. You will also need a MIG or ARC welder
(Max 180 Amp) to fabricate the furnace.

Be very careful with your gas pipe & joint connections, although there
are no great line pressures involved with the gas feed to the burner, but any small leak could lead to the possibility of a dangerous explosion.

Propane gas expands between sixty and one hundred times once exposed to air. So be aware, gas is the most efficient fuel you can use to fire a crucible furnace, but it can also be an extremely dangerous material. You need to follow any building instructions carefully and not be tempted to take any shortcuts as they may lead to personal injury.

If you are a resourceful, practical person, you could build your own crucible furnace for less than .00US, this is a mere fraction of the cost of a commercial unit, and should be equally as efficient, and provide many years of reliable melting service.


Building A Hobby Crucible Furnace

Purchasing Medela Sns Replacement Bathroom Fan Covers Immediately

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Welding Titanium - Weld Colors Tell a Story If You Are Listening

!±8± Welding Titanium - Weld Colors Tell a Story If You Are Listening

Titanium Weld Colors can teach you something. Even if you don't weld titanium, there is a cool trick where titanium weld colors help to test the quality of your torch gas. Stay with me here and learn the trick.

Discoloration of Titanium from the heat of welding is caused by oxidation and different colors are caused by varying thickness of oxide layers.

The cool thing about titanium weld colors is that they are predictable. In other words, we are able to determine what temperature the titanium metal reached when it was exposed to oxygen in the atmosphere.

The colors blue, violet, green, gray and white all happen at gradually higher temperatures.

There are some intermediate colors too and here is the progression..

The first titanium weld color is straw, followed by brown, then brownish blue, purple blue, green and blue, dull salmon pink, gray and white oxide.

Some Codes actually allow blue discoloration, but best practice is to prevent  titanium welds from discoloring beyond the straw color.

Often times titanium welds are critical enough to hold the standards higher than the minimum allowed by a code.

But like I said at the start, even if you dont need to weld titanium, you can use this information to test the shielding gas coming out of your tig torch.

Titanium begins to discolor at around 500 degrees F.  The hotter it gets without being protected by inert gas like argon, the more it oxidizes and changes colors beginning at straw and ending at white chalky oxide.

But when protected by argon until it cools below 500 deg F, titanium will be bright and silver even when heated past its melting point which is approximately 3135 F depending on the alloy grade.

What this means to you is that you can test the  shielding gas coming out of your tig torch just by making a puddle and  letting it cool and then evaluating the discolored titanium metal.

Here is how to do it...

Set your tig welding machine to about 50 amps for welding titanium. Set your post flow shielding timer to 15 seconds. Hold the tig torch at a dead nuts 90 degree angle to the titanium test piece and light up. Create a puddle about 1/4" to 3/8" , keep the arc as short as the diameter of the tungsten used, and dwell for around 7 seconds.  Let off your foot pedal amperage control and hold the torch still until the weld and heated area cools completely...around 15 seconds.

If your argon is not contaminated, your electrode as well as the titanium puddle will be completely silver.

There will be a circular area around the puddle weld where the argon envelope shielding protected the titanium, that is discolored. That's OK as long as it is symmetrical and at least as large as the inside diameter of the tig cup.

An odd shaped halo of titanium weld colors too close to the weld might indicate a clogged diffuser in the gas lens collet body or other problem...and if the weld puddle and electrode are not bright silver, you may have bad argon or a leak.

Things like that are very important to know before making a critical weld.


Welding Titanium - Weld Colors Tell a Story If You Are Listening

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Sunday, December 11, 2011

CNC Metal Cutting

!±8± CNC Metal Cutting

There are a variety of different CNC machines that offer the ability of metal cutting. You can use a lathe, a plasma cutter, and even a router. The machine that you will want to use will depend solely upon the job that will need to be performed, the specifications and diagrams of the job and the type of material that will be used. Some machines are better with different types of materials. For example, a lathe may be able to cut brass, however, what about 6" steel? As you can see, there is a difference in the capabilities of the machines and what type of materials that can be used so that the job is performed to the right specifications.

CNC plasma cutting machines offer the ability to cut through metal using heat. The CNC machine offers more precise cuts that what one can do manually. Large projects that are repetitive can be produced in a shorter period of time. The plasma cutters are usually available as portable devices or as stationary devices.

CNC water jet cutting is just another form of metal fabrication machines that can offer precise and detailed cuts. The water jet cutting machines offers nesting capabilities that allow for very little waste of expensive materials. You can produce repetitive products or cut several different products out of the same piece of material. When the piece is finished, you can guarantee that you will have a clean, smooth edge that is cut to the right specifications.

CNC laser cutting machines offers clients another form of metal cutting or fabrication. This machine creates what is known as "shaker" parts because the machine leaves a little piece of metal that connects each piece that has been cut. After the entire piece of material has been used, someone manually has to either shake the sheet to get the individual parts to break off of the large sheet or use a rubber mallet to break the ties. Because of the use of nitrogen and oxygen with the laser cutting machine, one can guarantee that the parts are smooth and professional and that there is no metal slap left over after the process is complete. CNC laser cutting offers extreme accuracy and cost efficiency for every project.

No matter what type of CNC cutting machine that is being used, these machines are usually self contained units and can eliminate, by themselves, a lot of safety issues. However, one still needs to practice safety techniques around these machines as they can still be dangerous. Wearing safety goggles, gloves and possibly earplugs are just a few easy safety tips that you can take advantage of.

The self contained machines leave little mess, hardly any worries of debris or dust particles in the air, etc. They are definitely a step above the former manual machines that were use in this industry. If you have any questions about the CNC cutting machines and what they have to offer or about the differences between them, contact your dealer as they should be able to answer any questions that you may have.


CNC Metal Cutting

Buyers Sunflower Seeds Sprouting


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