Aluminum Casting - Propane Foundry - Furnace and Tools

[mr95gst]

These are pictures from my first melt.




I started by melting some scrap aluminum and then I added a bunch of soda cans. Once I cleaned out the dross, I poured the aluminum into a muffin pan to make ingots.



This is a picture of one of the ingots sawed in two. You can see some small air bubbles but for the most part, it is solid. I have not tried using any degassing or flux additives yet, but they are supposed to remove the air from the molten aluminum.


After some trial with melting ingots, I mixed up some casting sand and made a couple flasks. So far I have been doing trials with flat objects. I made some flat plate and rectangular billets for machining on my mill. Once I get the hand of mold making, I will try some more complex parts.