Chome plated taps casting

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Manxmodder:

--- Quote from: RobWilson on February 15, 2015, 09:11:41 AM ---
--- Quote from: dawesy on February 15, 2015, 09:02:34 AM --- I'm sure chrome gives off nasty fumes when melted?
I could be wrong though.

--- End quote ---

You would be spot on , ist not advisable to be melting items that are chrome plated ,it can be removed chemically.

At the end of the day household plumbing/electrical fittings are made from junk , more Zinc than anything else.

Personal I would not bother with them , better to go to the scrap yard and buy and ONE large old Bronze casting and melt that .

Rob

--- End quote ---

Not disagreeing with your comment about lots of plumbing fittings being junk brass,but I happen to have a collection of DZR fittings. What would they be like for melting/casting?.....OZ.

RobWilson:
Hi OZ , I have no idea , I just no most plumbing fittings are junk brass for low pressure .

Thats why I said Household , if there Naval, Mines ,Pyro , Steam , high pressure then there more that likely to be Bronze , altogether a much nice material to work with .

Here you go http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/251790152378?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=108&chn=ps&device=c&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0-L&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=108&ff19=0 :)

Rob

vtsteam:
Chrome melts at 1900C. I have to admit, I've used chrome plated diecast parts (a car door handles) to recover small amounts of pot metal for a particular purpose I had -- melting point for zinc based alloys is low 400's C -- a long way from 1900. The chrome just separated from the melt as large flaky dross.

Stainless steel which some use for aluminum crucibles contains chromium, and that gets considerably hotter. Then there's welding stainless, (or even grinding it to sparks) which definitely melts the chromium does produce chromium vapor. But we should be venting welding fumes anyway. Chromium is defintely hazardous as a vapor.

Brass melts up around 1000C and that's still well below chrome's melting point. But personally, I'd be beyond my own comfort level melting chrome plated brass. It's still too close a temp for me. Anyway, I've only melted brass on a few occasions (other than brazing) and it's not a metal of choice for me. Zinc fumes at brass temps are the problem.

I only melt outdoors, and stay away from the exhaust for any kind of melt. Blower off for approaches, and I'm in the habit of holding my breath for a quick stir or small pour. Some use masks.

Ironman has a recent video of making bronze from copper and tin, I believe.

Eugene:
The "chrome" skin will be very thin, the nickel undercoat will be very much thicker and both will have much higher melting points than the brass. What you'd wind up with is a mass of molten brass with nickel / chrome skins wafting around, not much use for obvious reasons.

In the days when many motor car trims were ZBD, rejects from the various process steps would be remelted, but not those with plating defects, they were just scrapped. It wasn't worth the cost stripping off the Ni / Cr deposit. Occasionally one would slip into the mix and the resulting castings were always duff, you could see what were called in those non PC times "nodders" in the surface layer.

You can remove a chrome layer very easily and quickly with hydrochloric acid based brick cleaner, but the nickel will remain and you need specialist chemistry to strip that. I guess old un-plated brass plumbing fittings would be OK for remelting. Maybe a contractor replacing old installations with the new plastic stuff might have a reasonable quantity.

Eug

mfletch:
Thanks for the reply's guys there very interesting the plumber usually has long chrome plated shower mixer pipe? I was just thinking too turn it down on the lathe first to remove the chrome

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