i need some club plaques made some where near me up to 150 miles is cool what i would like to do is learn from you while you cast mine and show me how its done and so fourth, of course you would be paid what ever the cost is, and just show me how it works, any one interested in doing this or just making our plaques for up please message me or text or call,email direct.smoke signals, ect ect ya know whatever ya got thanks a bunch jeff 'whitey'whitehead rt 66 cruisers cc sprinfield il 217-836-4105 or bowtie56jw@yahoo.com thanks
Here's one HAMB tutorial. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=739761 There's also how to's on You tube. IIRC, O'Brien's casting is on here and could do your run of plaques if you're not up for the $ investment to set up a small home foundry...
You will find that most foundry people will not share their tricks and secrets. It's a difficult thing to do, but it's actually quite simple. I am in no way a professional. I should probably be safer about how I do things. I recommend reading about all the safety concerns before you start. I'm just merely telling you what I have done and figured out on a shoe string budget. I made the set up to do our own club plaques. I started off by making a blacksmith forge. I found some basic instructions online on how to make a burner. U had most of the stuff laying around the house and shop. Just old plumbing stuff. For the regulator, I used an acetylene regulator because they will screw into propane tank fittings, and are adjustable for higher pressures (most grill and heater type stuff run real low and won't let the burner light). The actual forge we made is just good old firebrick from Menards. I think we bought five boxes. I made the crucible out of 1/4" wall square steel tube with a 1/4" base. A steel crucible isn't ideal as we found out. It will shed slag into the aluminum. But it works OK. I tried a ton of different types of sand and BS. Not of it worked. You really need to get the right type of casting sand. We found some from a local foundry. About $60 for 5 gallon bucket and some sort of spray to add moisture if it dries out. Getting the proper moisture content has proven to be the hardest part. Packing the sand is what gives you the really sharp, clean edges. Read up on different methods for packing. For our plug, we used b*** wood from the local hobby shop. One of the club members cut out all the letters and pieces and glued them on. This is where things get tough. The letters and plaque all have to have draft angle so the plug will release. We had to sand edges and clear coat the piece many times until it was smooth enough to use. Use used chaulk for chaulk line or construction as our parting agent. Dump a little in a sock and powder it. We used recycled aluminum, but to get a proper pour you need to add about the same amount of new, clean aluminum. Here is a video- Click the picture---------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ First attempt- A new plug, didn't pour enough, or it didn't flow right, or it's too thick or I don't know. Let's make a bunch! Like 2 or three more! Not perfect, but good for another test. Well, that didn't work... Cut them up and try again. We have two thick keepers. After 7 pours between three plugs. These plaques were made from Kia's! The plaques are still thicker than most, but we are getting better.
AJ did a good blog on this here: http://www.hotroddisorder.com/p/v8ers-car-club-plaque-from-conception.html easy,,
beau, You need a cope on your drag. In other words a sand mold has two parts, a cope and a drag, or top and bottom. You have the drag made already now you have to make the cope with a sprue connecting the cope to the drag. You pour the metal down the sprue and the height of the sprue causes pressure in the mold and the mold will fill with sharp edges. Be sure to clamp the two halves together or the molten aluminum will float the cope and metal will run out at the part line. Easy??? somewhat but be very careful. regards Greg Hornbostel
We did Aluminum casting in high school. Not that hard. Beau has it about right. As stated he needs a top. We also had a vent tube on opposite end. Dump on one side when it comes out other end it should be full. High school was 74-77. I am sure a few brain cells have been killed since then. So I prob do not remember it all correctly.
Jeff I have a small foundry when we have a weekend of casting you can come and join in, learn how to do it. Down I55 near St.Louis. It's hard, hot, and dirty work.
For low quan***y runs, you can make 2 boxes and make a tepered dove tail on two opposite ends to repeat the alignment when closing. Your plaques will show no mismatch of parting line so your repeat alignments is no going to require perfect match
These plaques were made from Kia's! Maybe that is the problem, making American parts with Korean metal. Ago
I was unaware of putting an angle on the cope and drag to help secure the sand. That has been the hardest part of it all. Getting the packed sand to stay put is tricky.
A strip of wood on the inside will help keep the sand steady, a metal commercial made flask have a small ridge in each part this "keys the sand in the flask. Also a clamp is a good idea holding them together, weights work too,
The cope has to be tight. If you make it out of 1" X 4" lumber you need to tie the sides to the ends with at least one threaded rod at each end. Any twist in the flask when you pull the cope off the drag will cause the sand to drop. A 1/4 X 3/4 inch dado on the cope will hold it the rest of the time. Nothing is needed in the drag as you use a bottom board and a follow board clamped to the flask to turn it over. If the sand still drops then you probably need to mull the sand to get some bond into it. If you don't have access to a muller you can simply walk on the sand for a length of time until the sand holds a shape better in your hand. When I mull a daily heap I like the sand to make a noticeable break in my hand and very little sand sticking to my hand. I use natural bonded sand with about 20% active clay and 5% water. The AFS grain on it is about 125. I have used it to make molds for plaques 1" X 6" up to tablets 8' X 5' weighing around 200# aluminum. A lot of foundry is look and feel and as mentioned above there are very few foundrymen who will talk about how they mold because it is hard to describe that look and feel. Hang in there, you'll either get good at it or get fed up with it. There is a lot of good advise here already. Just be careful regards
What about the new technology sand with a binder in it? The only thing I hear is only one time use. Ago
oil bond sand, no chance of a superheated steam explosion, just smoke. it's reusable for 1000's of molds. one type catalyst molds are for more complex parts.
seen 1st hand at the local hs foundry, you could take cl***es thru the local jr college. I wasn't taking the cl*** but some buds were. Just to bug John B he was the guy feeding the crucible, I called him over the a desk and said far would have gotten if I wasn't messing with you? He curses me turns around and that half filled crucible of aluminum blew straight up. The liquid metal blew out of the pot 20-25' there was a vent hood over top the aluminum is probably still up there. Furnace had been running about 20 minutes a good guess of the metal temp would be 1300 degrees. Lucky for John I was a **** to mess with him if he had been looking down at the crucible it would have taken his head off. Then came the argument how much moisture and where did it come from. Well lucky the late Gene Snyder, who ran the local foundry for 30 years started there when he was 16, was there and schooled the boys agreed with me a 1/2 drop of water. probably from the moisture in the air. If steam can power a steam engine pulling 100 tons of freight it can blow 5-15 lbs of aluminum fast enough to make you dead enough for burial! Water turns to steam at 212* sea level, 1200-1300* it has about 1000 degrees of superheat, when it pushes the metal out of a crucible real fast, sounds just like and explosion. You still pour 1300* or more it hits a a drop, the sand should give way long before molten aluminum but do you want take that chance?
If you are using traditional "green sand" and you use too much water in the mix and pack the sand too tight in the mold, you can get steam to blow the mold apart. When I worked in a foundry 40 years ago the iron pourers had a special flash they put over the molds when pouring, 1st to add weight so the top half didn't float off the bottom and second, to contain the sand if a mold did blow up. It didn't happen once in a thousand pours, but we were professionals. The muller operator mixed the sand right and us squeeze molders could only squeeze the sand so tight. If you don't know what you are doing, mix your sand a little too dry and sneak up on "just right". Just for your peace of mind the explosion is more like a fire cracker, not a stick of dynamite. As far as oldgoaly's story, the best way to avoid that type of explosion is to put your metal into a cold crucible then heat, what gets you in trouble is adding cold metal to the hot melt and getting water in the hot melt. Always a good idea to preheat your metal to make sure is dried out! This is also a good time to say wear enough clothes to cover all your skin, (this ain't the beach) leather SLIP-ON shoes leather welding gloves and a good clear face mask. The slip-on shoes will save some of your skin when you pour your shoe full of 1300 degree aluminum. Foundries won't let you wear tie shoes! I hope this helps or saves some skin on someone!!!! PS oldgoally, my guess is that there was water trapped in a bolt hole, with a bolt screwed in on top of the water.
Well thats a new one to me, however I've never casted iron but have done a lot of bronze in the 2400* range. Grave markers and plaques are quite thin and have a high surface to weight factor and I suppose if you let your permability get out of hand and the heap was wet it could happen. I guess the same thing could happen with petro bond and the exploding mold would also be on fire. Oil can be very explosive in a contained area. The foundry is a dangerous place. You never pick up anything off the casting floor with your hands and you never put anything in a crucible without bringing it up to at least 500*. Once again, be very careful. regards
There are a lot of web sites for the DIY or home metal casting hobby. A Goggle search will keep you busy for hours, here are some to start with. http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/index.html http://www.myhomefoundry.com/index.html http://foundry101.com/
Steve, I don't know exactly where the moisture came from, all the aluminum is stored inside, the doors were open it was warm and humid. John was shook up pretty good he said he just didn't pay that much attention to how much was in crucible other than it was the aluminum crucible and he was going to pour aluminum. Oil vapor burns, take a red hot pc of iron immerse completely in a bucket of oil no flames no bangs, that is very basic heat treating blacksmith's have been doing this for 100 years. You will get some smoke when poring, if you pull a flask apart too soon you can get a **** when the air hits the hot sand near the part cast and bunch more smoke. It doesn't send sand or anything else flying thru the air. Some of those youtube videos just dangerous!
The stuff we have is re-useable. I'm guessing the clear liquid we got with it is mineral oil??? It gets kind of sticky when mixing and burns black and smells horrible.
petrobond is one of the brands, mine I've added 2 stroke oil to as it is 30 years old. It's not use daily or weekly anymore. To mix in the oil the hf mixer works better, but muller the sand with a Simpson muller. There is a difference. Even have a sand fluffer as used in green sand, but haven't used it with the oil sand.
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