Metal Casting Zone

ive been reading up on brass! as i want mostly yellow brass im looking into turning red brass into yellow brass. im currently reading.how to cast small metal and rubber parts by william a cannon tab books 1987. has anyone tried this experiment??

since posting ive tried this experiment and can now conclude it cant be done just by adding more zinc to molten brass. i would need to obtain special alloying bars to achieve this result which would far exceed the budget!(im only a backyarder!)

What kind of alloy your red brass is? Does it contain some silicon (like 673 for exapmle)?
How much zink (in percentage)?

some charts i looked up stated that red brass contains up to 75% copper making "red brass" other research has revealed that brass isnt made simply by mixing molten copper and molten zinc together as you would mix up paint for example.

I see. The brass we are making has about 60-64% Cu, 30-32%Zn. Also sometimes we are making additions of Pb, As, Si, Al, Mn to get different mechanical properties (mostly we are using brass for the extrusions). When we are melting the brass in the furnace, we are melting Cu first and then we are adding Zn. Metals are mixing themselves during melting (we are using inducton furnace for melting). One hour and you have about 1 ton of brass

i take it that your foundry is using the special zinc alloying bars rather than pure zinc. my understanding is that alloy bars have mixes in them so they equal the same melting temp as the copper so they will combine to form brass.

xlchainsaw wrote:
i take it that your foundry is using the special zinc alloying bars rather than pure zinc. my understanding is that alloy bars have mixes in them so they equal the same melting temp as the copper so they will combine to form brass.
We are using pretty much pure Zinc (99.95% according to the information on slabs 25kg each)

different components of brass could have very different melting temp
for example melting temp for copper is about 1034-1035 C
melting temp for zinc is about 420 C
melting temp for silicon is over 1410 C
melting point for lead is about 328 C

But we still can have brass alloy which contains all those elements.

i must give it another go. i plan to cast something in plain copper soon for the experience