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Sawed off cupola

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vtsteam:
What I removed. This clinker shows how much junk there is in store bought charcoal briquettes. But I did take it as a positive sign for ultimately melting iron. In my older furnace, briquettes formed a lot of loose powder ash. But it was never fused like this was. So temps were clearly a lot higher in the new furnace even thought the fuel was a poor one.

Rob.Wilson:
Hi Steve

Your lining has fired well  :clap: :clap: your allot  closer to melting Iron than I  :ddb:


Rob

 

Mayhem:
Thanks for posting this.  I will be watching with interest.

vtsteam:
Thanks Mayhem.

Some accessories for the cupola. Made the botting irons and tapping bars this week from reinforcing rod.





The blower was actually once a turbine, believe it or not. I originally built it to see if I could harness a valveless pulsejet's output by attaching a turbine. It worked.

Basically a pulsejet puts out low velocity, low pressure high volume exhaust. Some people online have suggested that a Tesla disk turbine might be run off of one, but I thought that was wrong. Having built and run a disk turbine, I knew that it was a high pressure device, completely mismatched to a pulsejet's output.

So instead I went in the opposite direction and decided that a turbine shaped like a flat bladed scroll fan, and calculated the same way you would a blower requirement, would match up much better. And possibly wouldn't interfere with the resonance of a valveless pulsejet -- another problem when people have tried to do this in the past. I had used a manometer to measure the exhaust velocity of a pulsejet, and built the fan/turbine to suit

After I sized the fan for the output , I built it with ABEC 7 roller skate bearings and aluminum vanes. The bearing housing was a pipe flange, and a section of water pipe. The disk on the end is half black and half reflective to check RPM with a laser tach. Of course the aluminum vanes melted during the first trial in about 45 seconds! I replaced them with steel. After the switch to steel blades it ran fine. I hit it right on the numbers for RPM, too.

Back to cupolas.... this becomes just a fan if you rotate it with a motor, so I think I'll try to use it for the cupola. Assuming the output is suitable. I will have to try step up or down pulleys with a motor and a manometer to check the output.  I also built a manometer back when I was making this as a turbine.  Hope this fan is the right size for the cupola.

Mayhem:
OK - what are tapping irons and blotting bars used for?

Any pics of the build of the blower?  I note that both you and Rob Wilson have built them and this would be a good project log...

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