Category Archives: foundry

Foundry From Scrapped Oven for Cheap, Clean Castings

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Home-built foundries are a popular project, and with good reason. Being able to melt and cast metal is a powerful tool, even if it’s “only” aluminum. But the standard fossil-fuel fired foundries that most people build are not without their problems, which is where this quick and clean single-use foundry comes into play.

The typical home foundry for aluminum is basically a refractory container of some kind that can take the heat of a forced-air charcoal or coal fire. But as [Turbo Conquering Mega Eagle] points out, such fuels can lead to carbon contamination of the molten aluminum and imperfections …read more

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Portable Lightweight Foundry

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[Makercise] is getting ready for Maker Faire. One of the things he’d really like to do is some casting demonstrations. However, he has no desire to take his expensive and heavy electric kiln based foundry to Maker Faire. So, he made his own.

He got into metal casting during his excellent work on his Gingery lathe series. He started off by modeling his plan in Fusion 360. He’d use a 16qt cook pot turned upside down as the body for his foundry. The top would be lined with ceramic fiber insulation and the lid made out of foundry cement. He …read more

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From Shop Floor Dust To Carbon Steel

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[Chandler Dickinson] did his monthly sweep of the floor in his blacksmith’s shop when it occurred to him that all that metal dust had to go somewhere, didn’t it? So he did the only reasonable thing and made a crude foundry out of cinder blocks, melted his dirt in it, and examined what came out the other end.

His first step was to “pan” for steel. He rinsed all the dirt in a bucket of water and then ran a magnet at the bottom of the bucket. The material that stuck to the magnet, was ripe for reclaimation.

Next he …read more

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The Best Gingery Lathe Video Series To Date

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[Makercise] has been working on a Gingery Lathe since September last year. His videos on the process are by far the most detailed, clearly shot, and complete series on making a Gingery lathe we’ve come across.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Gingery series of books describe how to build an entire machine shop’s worth of bench top tools using only the hardware store, dumpster dives, charcoal, and simple skills. The series of books start out with the charcoal foundry. [Makercise] has built a nice oil fired foundry already so it’s off to the next book, Gingery 2,  is the …read more

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Custom Engine Parts from a Backyard Foundry

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Building a car engine can be a labor of love. Making everything perfect in terms of both performance and appearance is part engineering and part artistry. Setting your creation apart from the crowd is important, and what better way to make it your own than by casting your own parts from old beer cans?

[kingkongslie] has been collecting parts for a dune buggy build, apparently using the classic VW Beetle platform as a starting point. The air-cooled engine of a Bug likes to breathe, so [kingkongslie] decided to sand-cast a custom crankcase breather from aluminum.

Casting solid parts is a …read more

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