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Hi Everyone,

well after too many years of talking , thinking and dreaming about building my own furnace I decided the time had come to take action and start construction of my own gas fired reverb furnace.

My intent is to be able to cast reasonable sized Aliminium parts, so after some investigation I decided that an AX 20 Crucible having a 4.5litre capacity (filled to the brim) was a suitable choice.

I sourced a used LPG tank which came out of a 4WD, I got it from a place that does testing of tanks and other pressure vessels.

To make the marking out and cutting easier I found the centres and drilled locating holes so I could mount the tank between centres on trestles.

I used holes saws to cut exhaust, drain and burner ports.

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I used 35 by 70mm rectangular tubing to make the framework for the furnace.

Getting the base of the furnace centred and true to the virticle beams proved awkward but I ended up getting it set up quiet well.

Next job was to make an elevator for the upper sections of the furnace.

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Next job was to prep the tank for the blanket and refractory. Fortunately, the way the tank had been manufactured from new there was a lip inside which I was able to cut into sections and bend to form a ledge around the lower section of the body. This workd out to be a good way to help secure the refractory.

I also put anchors in the body and base to secure the blanket when the refractory is being rammed into place, I used stainless rod inside the lid to help hold the refractory in place, the picture of the lid shows exposed ends of the stainless rods, I added more rod in a zig zag fashion linking the ends but it seems I neglected to take a photo of the final layout.

I turned up some tapered to plugs put in the ends of the tank to make the drain and exhaust ports. The brown material used to make the fillets around the plugs is synthetic clay.

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The blanket was the next thing, I used two layers in the body but made one layer shorter than the other to ensure enough clearance was available on the ledge for the refractory to get large mounting surface.

The discs on the anchors are installed to hold the blanket in place while the refractory goes in, they fit over the anchors and are rotated ninety degrees to lock.

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I used a plastic bucket as a plug for the body. I screwd the bucket to a sheet if MDF and threw in some lead weights and sand to make sure it was not going to move or deform during the ramming process. I used a thin layer of grease as a release agent where required on surfaces that came in contact with the refractory.

I used the chrome bar to hammer the refractory into place. Getting the refractory in is a very slow, hard job. The refractory I got was made by www.sila.com.au and supplied by www.pyrotek.info

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To prepare the base for the refractory I turned up a plug which is for a drain hole should the crucible fail while inside the furnace. The plug had a slight taper on it so it released very easily after the refractory cured. I used some synthetic clay to make a radiused fillet at the ends of the plug which in operation is used to reduce noise of air flow through the hole, because the airflow through the drain hole in operation is almost zero anyway it was more a precautionary measure than a real requirement. The exhaust port also has radiused openings which was a necesity due to the higher air flow.

I melted wax into a pot to make a plug for the combustion chamber in the base, and used pvc pipe and clay to form recess for the burner and the lead for the flame.

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The shape of the lid made it neccesary to weld legs to it and secure the lid to the trestles for the refractory installation. Because of the nature of the job it was impracticle to put a radius on the inside edge of the exhaust port so I rammed up the refractory then let it cure and used an angle grinder and die grinder to radius the edge and do a bit of a clean up of the dome on the inner face.

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I was advised to construct the furnace with a seperate stand for the crucible because some crucibles when heated to opperating temperature can become sticky and bond to the surface on which they sit, this can usually be prevented by putting some paper between the stand and crucible but sooner or later there is sure to be a time when you forget to do it and it all turns pear shaped. With a sepperate stand for the crucible it can be much easier to deal with should this happen. The other benefits of a seperate stand is if the condition of the stand deteriorates through use it is a simple and cheap job to make another one, and if there is a need to change to a taller crucible a shorter stand can easily be made.

I used a plastic pot plant as a mould for the stand. The pot plant didn't have the flat bottom I wanted so I used sticky tape to seal off the drain holes and filled the the pot to the desired level with a mixture of sand and plaster of paris. When it set I lined it with a smear of grease and added the refractory. I formed channels in the base of the stand so the metal could flow to the drain hole in event of a crucible failure, and used a home made tool to make the base level. In hind sight I went about it the wrong way, I should have calculated the height of the stand and filled the pot with plaster to that level and used a plug to form the chanels and then troweld across the very top of the pot to elininate the need for the tool and to simplify the job.

When the refractory cured I poped it out of the pot and gave the plaster of paris a few sharp hits and it broke away cleanly to leave me with a finished stand.

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When I removed the plug from the body it revealed a pretty good finish.

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When the base cured it was time to remove the plug. The drain port plug came out easily, but he combustion chamber plug, due to having no draft was very difficult to get out. I had to tip it on its side and smash and chisel it out bit by bit. I even had to use a heat gun to melt part of it away. The mold I used was a cooking pot which was the perfect size and matched the diameter of the body. When I origionally cast the plug I had to put it in the freezer so that the wax would shrink enough to get it out of the pot. I didn't think it would be quiet as difficult as this to get out of the refractory, it did actually make a nice form in the finished part though.

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The only real issue I encountered was the way I finished the mating faces of the lid and the body created some irregularities which was a potential source of heat loss and flame leakage. Traditionally a common way to deal with poor joints is to bond a high temperature rope to one of the surfaces which forms a gasket. I didn't have any rope at the time so I tried something a little unorthodox, I mounted the body onto a rotary table and used a masonry saw to face off the offending surfaces. It actually turned out to be quiet successful.

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Now for the fun part, the burner. The burner design was curtesy of Cameron McKeown http://home.iprimus.com.au/cmckeown/ which I understand is derived from design work by Ron Reil. Thanks for your help on the whole project Cam.

The thermocouple shows 1328 Deg. C. (2422 Deg. F.)but it did break through the 1350 (2462 Deg. F.) mark a few times when I was trying different settings with gas pressure and air fuel ratios. This was done using LPG from a Swap and Go bottle which I got from a service station (it's a BBQ bottle).

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I made a pedal opperated lifter for the lid so I can open the lid to skim the dross off the melt.The upper section is not shown but I'm sure you get the general idea of how it works.

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The process of drying the refractory before normal use must be followed or vaporising moisture in the refractory will cause the refractory to spawl and even explode. Basically the temperature is raised at the rate of approximately 50ºC per hour per 25mm thickness of lining until working temperature is reached. I started off with a camping hot plate which fitted neatly inside the bottom of the combustion chamber. Then I used the burner in a virticle position at the lowest possible setting to avoid direct contact of the flame and refractory and slowly increased the temperature. To finish I put the burner in its normal position and started with the coolest flame possible and worked up from there.

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I needed to make a pouring shank but I was concerned about the safety aspects of a one man lift shank and the weight of the crucible, charge and shank, it just looked too difficult and dangerous so I opted for an A frame type of shank which could be wheeled around easily and safely. After using this shank I very pleased I went to the exra trouble to make it, some may say overkill, but I have no regrets.

I designed it so it could be sepperated into two parts for space efficient storage (to be hung on a wall). The A frame and the shank both have square tubing which is the mounting point.

This is a video of my cnc router which used as a flame cutter to cut the clamping arms on the pouring shank.

[ame="http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bvebcAU1r7A"]YouTube - CNC Flame Cutter[/ame]

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This shows some detail of the axle fabrication.

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I made a preheat chamber to dry moisture off any aluminium which I would be adding to an existing molten charge. It's very important to preheat anything which will be going into the charge as even the slightest bit of moisture, even not if visible to the naked eye can cause a steam explosion and cause molten alloy to go flying in all dilrections. The other point worth noting is that putting a significant mass of cool metal into a hot charge may cause thermal shock on the cricible resulting in a crucible failure, it's a bit like throwing boiling water onto a frozen windsheild.

I made some ingot moulds out of angle iron so I could do a trial run before I painted everything.

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And now for a video of the furnace in operation. This was in the semi complete stage as I wanted to do a try out prior to painting the whole outfit.

[ame="http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=tLSqgXDqIy4"]YouTube - Splints furnace[/ame]

Well Folks, this draws my build log to an end, feel free to applaud and throw money... OK, enough applause START THROWING MONEY!!!

[TOTALLYRC]

Makes me want to finish the other 10 projects I have going and start my furnace.
Keep up the good work.

Mike

(nuts)OOPS, I must have dropped the dime I was going to throw.(nuts)

[Greolt]

Great job Splint. :cheers:

Thanks for taking the time to do a build log on your furnace.

I'm keen to see it in action. I'll have to come over one day when you have it fired up.

Greg