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  1. #1
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    Default Ceramic board furnace for aluminium melting, will it work?

    Hi all,

    Just after some advice, I plan to make an aluminium melting furnace powered by propane and was just wondering if using cermamic board would be suitable as the lining instead of using cermamic blanket and then coating it with a high heat resistant coating.

    Any advice/suggestions would be good.

    Thanks

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  2. #2
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    Ok, so here is a photo of the ceramic board I was thinking about using, it is 35mm thick.

    Would something like this work?

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  3. #3
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    I can't see why not. You're only dealing with ~700degC and from a quick Google search it looks like most ceramic fibre boards are good to at least 1000C.
    If you want more insulation use a couple of layers, or back it with Hebel brick.

    Steve

  4. #4
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    The only issue I can see is that it won't be round like most other setups I have seen around.

    It will have to be hexagon shaped, not sure if this will make it less efficient or not.

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  5. #5
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    Square probably wouldn't be the best, but hexagonal or octagonal I'm sure would be perfectly fine.
    I've seen quite a few furnace builds online where they used bricks so ended up with a faceted inner surface and had no problems.

    Also, plenty of horizontal gas forges around with vertical burners and 4 sides (albeit with the ends open) - happily heating steel to yellow hot (1000C ?)

    Different story if you were looking for higher temperatures for melting materials like bronze but for aluminium you could probably just throw the crucible in a drum, poke in your burner and forget about the refractory altogether!

    Steve

  6. #6
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    Yeah for the time being I'd be happy if it could just melt aluminium as I have a large pile of scrap that needs some downsizing

    Maybe if it works out I can look into building a more serious setup that can run at higher temperatures and melt different materials, maybe even look into a waste oil type setup.

    I've been meaning to build a melting furnace for probably the last 10 years if not more but it's always ending up in the too hard basket and I loose interest.

    I will post a photo of my burner and crucible tomorrow and hopefully can get some suggestions on dimensions to build it.

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  7. #7
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    Default

    Ok so here are some photos of the burner and crucible that I just took.



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