Aluminium Casting,self-taught

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gus

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Would like to share my experience.Seen my uncles melting and casting aluminium which they made it look so simple
judging melt temperature by eyeball and book mold temeperature by spitting .Twenty eight years later as plant/product manager I tried casting 100 pces aluminium condensate traps used on Champion Air Compressors.

My uncles were all dead by them.Did the hard way.Theoretical Foundry Practice picked up in technical college did helped a wee bit.So went out to buy reference books on aluminium casting.
No short cut.
1.Got my cast iron foundry supplier to cast a self-standing crucible,designed and built gas fired furnace.
2.Bought a digital thermo-couple pyrometer. 3.Cut m.s.molds which gave me headaches.recut in cast iron.
4.Bought degassing tablets.refining chemicals which smelled like the dickens.
5.Fumbled around to figure out best melt/pour temperature. Messed around and discovered mold temperature.
6.Took quite a few days to get me a hundred good castings.Gave it to machineshop to turn into auto traps.
Assembled and deilivered a hundred sets of Ingersoll-Rand Model H55 packages with same traps.Came next year
order for three hundred machines.Got to get smarter.went on to pneumatic aided casting machine with two molds.



Ingersoll-Rand Model H75 Air Compressor.jpg


IMG.jpg
 
good one!!! pressure casting !!!!! your uncles would be proud. :)
 

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