Surprise furnace improvement

[dallen]

anybody in here used a referb furnace, I'm thinking about building a new furnace, and I want it to be either a top hat, so I don't have too lift the crucible up an out, or make it a referb and tip it up and pour into one of the ladle liners that are light weight and the only thing I would have to do it hit it with a rosebud to heat it up to catch the melt for pouring, or tip straight into a mold. if only doing one mold.

opinions, comments, Pro's, Con's. one of the pro's I see is I can do the top half with fiber and make it super fast to heat up to melt temp. If I do the bottom half of a reveb right I should be able to use fiber under a hardshell melting basin or instead of fiber use the Alumina Oxide brick as an underlayment and for the insulating factor.
I don't want to do Iron in it, Actual easiest way to do Iron is in a Cupola, if your going to pour lots of it. Otherwise if your pouring over an A10 you have to have help either manual or electric hoist type.
The one big advantage to a reveb is that if built right they are continuous melters for non ferrous metals like aluminum because if you leave a heel unless your only making one pour or the last pour as you pour our molds you just keep feeding material to the furnace, dross is no problem, because its easy to just hold it back and leave it in the furnace till you clean out, or it builds up enough that you have to remove some. The Dross is a natural protective cover plus a bunch of impurity's from oil, clear coatings from car wheels and such.
Also with a referb you can set your burner up to run a lot more efficient so that in times of high fuel cost you get the most for you buck as the politicians say.

[Rocco]

Here's mine, you can read about it in THIS THREAD.

And, relating this back to the first post in this thread, notice in the first picture, the burner has a small sheet metal shield attached to it that prevents extra air from entering the tuyere around the outside of the burner tube.

[dallen]

whats your recovery time when you have to put more metal in it or do you just put in enough to fill the mold you have in line??????

and I just glazed over a big spot in the blue pig melting cast iron, from start to and almost full A10 in under and hour, beat my old record of and hour and fifteen minutes bye nearly half and hour, with the highest fuel pressure during the melt being 20 psi for the last fifteen minutes I think thats when I got the glaze on the wall. Metal sure pour good though.

[Rocco]

I generally melt as much as I need so I've never tested the recovery time. The only I've actually measured the performance of the furnace, it melted about 6 kgs of aluminum in a little over 30 minutes from a cold start using 700 grams of propane. I have no idea what kind of performance most people get out of their setups but I was pretty pleased with that.

[dallen]

that sounds like it does pretty good, I must of had my burner this morning running right in the sweet spot, I opened the furnace up to put this big hunk of cast iron in it to kinda simmer all afternoon and I saw that I had not only glazed the side but there is a big spot in the wall right at the top where the flame must of been really hammer ing the hell out of it, its all glazed over, so it looks like I am going to be in for a reline in the near future. I was running a lot less gas pressure today then I normally run also. I open the thing back up I will grab a picture and post it up.

I'm thinking that for small to medium sized pours a guy could just pour out the spout into the mold if you knew where to place the mold, which is easy after the first time you pour or do a couple dry tilts to see where it needs to set.

What do you think about say cutting in half the top and hinging it so you don't have to open the whole thing to charge it, for when your running and you need to add some more ????

[HT1]

Well something else is obviously going on, today it took me 2:05 to get yellow brass to 1180°C. The burner was not happy at all, I had some Whoomping, which adjusting the burner side to side, and in and out limited, I had to crack the lid open a half cm to get a good, n ot great burn. I suspect that was casue by the crucible not sitting straight up and down, I cleaned the bottom of the furnace very well, so the plith will sit good and flat next time, I will report back

[dallen]

check the orifice on your burner it may have a tiny bit of trash in it, and some propane will create tar balls anyway check it something may of gotten into the hose. I have a weed burner torch I used to use to light my cooker with it would get a bit of trash and wouldn't burn worth a Sh%t first time it happened like to of drove me crazy figuring out what was wrong. Nice thing about my burner is there is no orifice, just an open 1/8 inch pipe fitting.

[Harry]

+1 on the side drain, easy to plug and clear if needed for scrapping directly in the furnace. Of course for scrapping I kind of think it would only be good for aluminum and obviously you dont want to scrap different metals in the same furnace.

[Nudge]

I have scraped some big bronze bits in my furnace before. the floor is a knock out one so I just changed it.