Have there been any development in this field lateley??
I am in the process of gathering information on a furnace that could be used for melting Al and possibly for making some Al/Mg alloys.
Ideally, I want to use electricity as the energy source, and have already made a ill-conceived attempt at making a resistive heater, but I can't find a suitable castable refractory, so I resorted to fireplace-brics and leca, loosely fitted in a large steel bowl, and using nicrothal wires coiled up as springs, and fitted in slots carved in the bricks.
The result was a big spike in the electric bill, and alot of red-hot leca and fire bricks...
The Al I managed to melt, ate it's way through the capped steel pipe crucible, and generally made a big mess..

I'm pondering a new design, using a red clay crusible and furnace liner/heat wire holder and using mineral whool for insulation.

While browsing the net, I found out about induction heating, and started to seriously consider this as an alternative route.

Al is a very conductive material and also it's not magnetic, and I would guess that it would be pretty hard to develop enough heat to melt it.

How would clay stand up to the thermal fluctuations that one could expect from a furnace like this?
Just hours ago, I exploded a small square of hardened glass by ignoring the stresses caused by uneven heating.
I made a small coil from my heating wire, and placed it on the glass, and placed a piece of Al inside...
The al melted, and solidified into a blob on the glass...
I removed the glob, and put the glass aside to cool down.
After maybe 5 minutes, it exploded, and sprayed small glass cubes all over the place...
Would clay behave in a similar manner, or is it more flexible?