Metal Casting Zone

Being new to this art form, I have elected to start with low temperature alloy casting until I have learned enough to invest more heavily in equipment. I have a melting pot, a few pounds of ZA-27 alloy, and a temperature controller. I do not yet have a casting flask, casting sand, or fluxing supplies. Any suggestions are welcome!

Gordon Scott

Hello Gordon,

Sounds like you and I are in the same boat. I am in the "investing in new toys" stage.

Welcome Aboard,
Ivan

hello there,

i was in the same boat as you guys only a few months ago.

with as little expense as possible

and only my spare time.

i am now making some nice castings.

i will try to pass on as much info as possible.

good luck,

george

..looks like everyone is purty new..
I wonder if I should go on over and see if I can get a couple choice folk over here to check it out..

Some real good folk I know of, that don't spam, and aren't flamers, either...

Thanks, Thor! My objective is to cast small caliber firearm receivers for home made rifles and pistols. I have been just hogging out aluminum billets, but that is a wasteful enterprise in terms of time and aluminum!

Gordon

hello all im new to all this but have yrs of experience in other areas to draw on. ive made homemade forges for yrs but never tried to melt aluminium.a forge is a great way to start! plus you can rid of wood waste and cook some sausages after the melt!

ya.. cast the pieces and Then machine them! There is no "waste" involved when doing it with cnc.. time can be justified by the enjoyment in the process; aluminum can be justified by the re-meltable chips.

I started around 3 years ago making my furnace. I took a long time off and then started back a few months ago and finished it. I am now casting aluminum. I am processing scrap as fast as I can pouring ingots like crazy. I have done an actual sand casting of a hand crank handle. (see my pics)

Melting aluminum is much easier than I originally thought as a newbie. It can also be a very inexpensive journey to get started in metal casting. All in all I probably have around 50 - 75 dollars in my whole outfit. That includes sand mix, flasks and such, furnace, oil burner, crucible and all. The key there is that I used whatever I could scrape up and already had. Really the only thing I bought all parts for is my oil burner. It cost me around 25 - 30 dollars when all said and done.

After doing it, if there are any areas that I would be more particular to start with, it would be the refractory, and the crucible. I built my furnace out of a 5 gallon metal bucket, a terra-cotta pot, cement, perlite, and sand. I built the frame from some left over 1/2 in conduit I had lying around. My first crucible was a camping stove propane bottle. My second is a compressed liquid nitrogen tank cut off the bottom. My sand mix is bentonite and silica sand.

It is a really easy thing to do. The key is making sure you are keeping it safe.

If there are any specific questions I can answer, let me know. Being relatively new myself, I may not have all the answers, but I am not embarrassed to say I do not know if I really don't also. I will answer anything I can.

glad to hear you are really getting into it. i made a major breakthough myself by trial and error and wow im now casting every day trying to make enough model parts for a market stall.all of my gear was scrounged and pieced together. keep up the good work.

hi Gordon,
I'm also new to the site and casting of Aluminium.
A bit of home work on the net and I found the mixture for Alloy flux. Have just gone looking for it again, however it is a combination of Sodium Choride (table salt) and Potassium Chloride (I think) in a certain mixture or ratio, I have purchased 25 kgs of each from a chemical supply company (this should keep me going for years) and am about to experiment Will let you know the results,
Cheers for now,
regards
Graham Smith
South Australia