On 09/25/2016 01:11 PM, Danny Miller wrote: > Some of our folks built a metal kiln and we tried to melt some aluminum > swarf the neighboring metalshop discarded, at least what we thought was > aluminum (no confirmation, but it wasn't steel). We got almost no metal, > just inches of dross. No inert gas or flux there, in fact the metal was > exposed to combustion gases. > > It may have been "pot metal", which is what carburetors and such parts used to be made of. Mostly zinc.
Some guys here have various melting furnaces, and general chunks of aluminum melt well. You do get some dross, but not INCHES of it, for sure. One guy has an old ladle furnace, which looks like a stainless wok with 3 gas burners below it. So, you light the burners, and then toss various chunks of aluminum castings (pistons, sawed-up transmission casings, etc.) in the bowl, and they slowly disappear. When all melted, you skim the dross and ladle out the aluminum into your molds. Even with the pool of molten aluminum exposed to the air, you don't get much dross. Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
