Found Dreaming

I made a change to my furnace, I've change the position of the tuyere, I originality had in from underneath the furnace so I decided to run it from the side just to see what the difference is, and man there sure is, Its melts the metal much quicker and use a lot less fuel

Mike

Mike,
Modifing a furnace or any tool is a lot of fun and a great way to learn.Looks good....
My Kiln/Furnace is operating on change 9 or 10 right now and have added my version of Andrei's EVA burner(oops, must be change 11,LOL).
Being "frugal"(read cheap) modifications are generally less expensive than building a new one with each new idea.
For me besides having the burner entering the side of the furnace,closing the exhaust hole in the lid and adding a side exhaust also increased the heat and shortened the melt time.Might give that some consideration as well.
Don

I remember when you built that and put the hole in the bottom, I was kind of iffy on it then but not so much from a performance standpoint but more logistics. Glad to hear that moving to a tangential configuration has also improved performance.

I can imagine it was a bit of a pain cracking in the new hole. More of a tense moment on which way will it break than intense labor. Good thing about this commercial refractory is you can easily patch it up.

blindpig wrote:Mike,
Modifing a furnace or any tool is a lot of fun and a great way to learn.Looks good....
My Kiln/Furnace is operating on change 9 or 10 right now and have added my version of Andrei's EVA burner(oops, must be change 11,LOL).
Being "frugal"(read cheap) modifications are generally less expensive than building a new one with each new idea.
For me besides having the burner entering the side of the furnace,closing the exhaust hole in the lid and adding a side exhaust also increased the heat and shortened the melt time.Might give that some consideration as well.
Don

I'll give that some consideration next time, thanks Don

Harry wrote:I remember when you built that and put the hole in the bottom, I was kind of iffy on it then but not so much from a performance standpoint but more logistics. Glad to hear that moving to a tangential configuration has also improved performance.

I can imagine it was a bit of a pain cracking in the new hole. More of a tense moment on which way will it break than intense labor. Good thing about this commercial refractory is you can easily patch it up.

I had cut a hole in the side of the keg prier to making the furnace and clued a put a piece thin ally sheet over the hole so if and when I wanted to change the tuyere position it would be much easer and It was a lot easer than I thought it would be to do, first I fired up the burner and melted the ally sheet then with a screw drive I dug out the foamed insulation to the hot face, then I used a 3/8 masonry bit in my drill but not on the hammer action , I drilled out the hole as best I could then I used the ball on a ball peen hammer to break it all away roughly to the size I need , then it was just a matter of inserting a piece of 60 mm pvc tube that was coated in silicon and cementing it all in with refractory

Mike

I didn't think it would make much difference with efficiency, but it sounds like it does.

Jammer wrote:I didn't think it would make much difference with efficiency, but it sounds like it does.

Its more efficient for me anyhow from stone cold to pouring I reckon I have gained 10 minutes or more. I'm still using a steel crucible and when the burner was underneath the crucible would never get red hot, It does now, my crucible is a bit tall 9.8 x4.7 inch(250mm x 120mm) and with the burner underneath I do think that was part of the problem also

Mike

Um disregard those times above, those times were for scrap wheels that I had melted in a fire and were a lot thinner then my ingots, today I melted ingots and its about the same but appears to be using less fuel

Mike