The Shop > Metal Stuff
Smelting
John Hill:
If I recall correctly the school metal shop teacher had a piece of hooked fencing wire which he used to pick out the gudgeon pins from the melting pistons.
He also had a flux of some kind, it looked like a handful of crystals, which he threw into the pot then scooped off a layer of grunge that floated to the top.
(I am talking about the school shop here, not the backyard job with Mum's unfortunate vacuume cleaner.)
Darren:
Thanks John,
I saw someone throwing something in the melted mix and then scooping the crud out but he didn't say what it was....
John Stevenson:
It needs to be as clean as possible, i.e. studs removed etc and once mented you throw in some ge-gassing tablets which boils it up to release any impurities in the metal which then floats on top as dross.
This is skimmed off and a flux applied to the surface whilst the final temperature is reached, then this is skimmed off just prior to the pour.
Alloy wants to skin and oxidise very easily so the cleaner you can keep the metal the better.
Final quality is a bit of a question brought about by what the original material was and other factors.
Just because the parent metal was good quality doesn't meant to say that the new part will be the same as some components can burn off in the remelt.
John S.
Bernd:
The stuff is boarax. It's a flux to help make the impurities float to the top so you can skime them off.
Bernd
Darren:
Thanks Guys, all interesting stuff.
The main reason for looking at this idea is because dirty scrap no longer fetches enough reward for the scrap dealers to haul about. So it's mounting up in the yards.
Being offered all "you can carry" is certainly an incentive.
I don't think "doing it" presents too much of an issue, Initially I'd think about chucking bits in the cast stove during the winter to separate the steel.
But the question of the final quality still remains.
Only one way to find out I guess..... :smart:
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