Amount molten with the first propane melt: 1160 grams of aluminium. This would not have been possible with a single batch of charcoal in my furnace.
A new setup, no hairdryer, instead I got myself a propane torch and a small + big propane bottle. I can fill the small one with the big one so I only have to drag a small bottle around when I’m working.
Propane is one of the hottest burning gases so I decided to get rid of the charcoal and start burning with propane. Charcoal was giving me way too much pollution, bot the smell and the ashes were very intrusive. Propane burns very clean if you calibrate the flame in the correct way.
Another plus is that propane is simply turned on with a dial and a lighter. In contrary with charcoal, which you first have to light, wait a century until it’s all lit and then you can use it, for a short while, until the charcoal runs out of energy and after that the whole process starts over again.
The propane did have one drawback, it took longer to melt aluminium because the furnace itself also had to be heated by the propane where the charcoal would give off heat by itself. The furnace only started to work correctly after it was heated up by the torch. I can imagine this being a problem when used in the winter, luckily for me, it’s currently the end of spring in the Netherlands and the ambient temperatures are quite good.
What I’m doing in the video is that I’m melting the scrap down into reusable ingots, the ingots are important to make first because 2nd hand aluminium contains contaminates in the form of, but not limited to: other metals, oxides and paint.
When re-melting these ingots I immediately produce a much cleaner batch, which can be used for model-casting. I’ll soon have enough to start casting my furniture pieces I so dearly need for my graduation project!
Post time: Jun-15-2017