Tin cans and other scrap. for recyclable materials How to make an oven for melting aluminum with your own hands
Aluminum alloys have a low melting point and good machinability of parts. And there is always a lot of scrap aluminum in the household.
That is why aluminum is often melted at home to replace non-standard or small parts of mechanisms: cast a billet, and then work it on a lathe. Sometimes from aluminum with their own hands make souvenirs and small interior items.
Smelting Aluminum at Home. The Metal Worker’s Guide
Aluminum is one of the most common metals on earth. It is present even in the human body, so what to say about the surrounding reality. In every home or personal car there are aluminum functional elements, parts or units, which, alas, quite often break down. These are furniture and window hardware, door and shutter rails, lock latches and other necessary little things.
You can replace them with new products you buy, repair them, or make them yourself. In the latter two cases, and may need melting aluminum in home conditions.
Finishing the assembly of the furnace
To complete the design of an aluminum smelting furnace with your own hands, you need to do the following:
- The prepared rings are put on a twisted sheet of metal and connected around the circumference.
- The bottom for the furnace body can be assembled from the same sheet metal that has already been used for the pipe. It is mounted by welding to the very bottom ring.
- It is necessary to make a special hole in one of the bricks, through which it will be possible to place an electric heater directly inside the working chamber.
- For ease of laying, it is worth immediately numbering the bricks, and then begin laying them. It is necessary that they are very tight to each other. The resulting design of the furnace for melting aluminum, with his own hands made, should be very stable.
- It is also necessary to attach a heating spiral to the bricks.
- To install the spiral heater, it is necessary to make several grooves and install the bricks according to them.
- Also grooves can be cut in the right places with an angle grinder. Eye and respiratory protection is recommended during work.
- Most often, the material for the spiral is either nichrome or fechral.
- The coil must be wound very carefully and in such a way that the coils are not too far from each other. The distance is necessary to avoid short circuits.
- The whole construction should be coated with mortar.
This is how you can make a muffle-type aluminum smelting furnace with your own hands.
The oven for melting aluminum with my own hands
Homemade furnace for melting aluminum at home, made by a craftsman with his own hands: detailed photo instructions for making a crucible furnace.
As you know, aluminum is often used by homebuilders, to make various homemade parts. The average melting temperature of aluminum is 650-660 ℃, so this metal can also be smelted at home, casting ingots and blanks for parts.
The process of making a crucible furnace for melting aluminum is shown in detail in the photo.
Slow Motion Hand in Liquid Nitrogen
Mini stove made out of a wheel rim
To make this model is very simple. A wheel disc of the desired diameter is dug into the ground so that its surface coincides with the horizon, that is, it does not protrude above the surface of the ground. In the middle of the disk inside the resulting furnace there must be a hole through which we pass a curved pipe that comes out near the smelter. It will supply oxygen from below into the mini-furnace. It is convenient to use a small cooler, put on the outside of the pipe, as a blower. However, with this kind of air supply, the blowing will be extremely poor and unidirectional. To do this, inside the boiler at the outlet pipe build a kind of burner. It is convenient to use for this purpose a disc brake, welded on top of the pipe. After that it is possible to fill the coals in the mini-melting room, to supply air and to raise their temperature. The aluminum scrap in the crucible is placed among the coals.
Aluminum smelting at home
Aluminum melting furnace
For the oven shown in the picture we needed: 23 regular red bricks, a regular hair dryer, a grill grate, a tall tin can, duct tape, a piece of pipe about 30 cm long and about the same diameter as the outlet of the hair dryer (but the bigger the better).
The bricks are placed in such a way as to create a hollow, as wide and as long as one brick. The pipe lies loosely between the bricks. On the first layer of bricks is placed a grate, and of course not necessarily the grate from the grill. On the grate will lie the coal or firewood. The second layer of bricks is placed on the grid, as shown in the photo.
1000W Induction Heating Part 3: Melting Aluminum
The position of bricks in subsequent layers alternates, as shown in the first photo. The number of layers may be different.
A tin can, in which the aluminum will be melted, is suspended on a wire. Obviously, this wire must not be aluminum. A suitable piece of wire can be obtained from a wire rack. A prefabricated coat rack hook also comes in handy; it is attached to a wooden stick, and a can of molten aluminum is hooked with this device. For the wire, two holes must be made in the jar. If the can has jagged edges left over from the can opener, you should press them down, for example with pliers.
The metal tube is connected to the hair dryer with duct tape (preferably PVC, i.e. duct tape, it is more flexible than duct tape). During the process of the heater will not be damaged and is suitable for use as intended, however, at first it is necessary to monitor the temperature of the pipe in place of contact with the hair dryer. For greater rigidity, the joint can be wrapped with thick (magazine) paper. First the end of the strip of paper is taped as shown in the picture below, then this strip is wrapped around the connection of the hair dryer and the tube, then the second end of the strip and its edges are taped.
Pay attention to keep the hair dryer, lying on the ground, free of dust. You can put something under it, like newspaper.
After heating the stove, two bricks are put on top so that a square hole is formed.
The resulting melt, you can start by pouring it into a mold made directly in the ground, but the quality of the surface will of course be poor.
Another variant of the melting furnace has an even simpler design. The furnace is made with only two metal cans and a hairdryer.
One can is placed on top of another. At the bottom of the lower jar there are a few holes for the air blown by the hairdryer. But soon the thin metal of the jars will be burnt because of the high temperature, and this is the main disadvantage of this variant.
Tools and materials used to make a melting furnace with their own hands
The top jar should stand on the bottom jar, and if it is not, you have to staple it somehow. For the stability of the entire stove design, you can put stones on the bottom of the bottom jar.
In this variant the part of the dryer is right under the combustion chamber and on it may fall embers or the kindling fluid, which is therefore better not to be used. To protect the hairdryer, the part inserted into the oven can be wrapped in foil.
The can with molten aluminum is placed directly on the coals, but it is still better to make its attachment as in the first variant of the furnace.
Function and classification
The metal smelting furnace is a furnace that has been used in the blacksmithing industry for many years. However, the low efficiency index determined that it was not used in the production of items made of the alloy in question in industry. There is the following classification:
- By type of body: open and closed. Open has a completely open top. Closed version has a closed top.
- By place of installation: stationary and personal forge.
Closed forge
Open type furnace
For the removal of combustion gaseous products, a special pipe is created, if the work is carried out indoors. Open type does not have a pipe, because the products of combustion go without their removal.
Homemade Melting Furnace for Aluminum
For home aluminum melting requires a special furnace, which can be made with our own hands from a simple coffee can. Step-by-step instructions for those who wish to cast aluminum at home.
Then we measured three evenly spaced mowing lines from the floor of the foundry to the top edge around the perimeter of the interior. This marks the three rows in which the electric coil will be inserted.
Using a square file, we made grooves in the bricks and used a piece of electric coil to ensure the correct depth.
