| Click on the pictures to enlarge. | ||
 |
 |
 |
A1. Oven heating up. This is the casting site in the garage. Right in the front you can see the ingotmould. Here goes the surplus aluminium. |
A2. The other way around. Today I noticed: casting inside the shop makes your tools, machines and equipment instantly rust. Maybe I'll do future sessions outside. |
A3. Opening the lid to add aluminium |
 |
 |
 |
| A4. Adding preheated ingots to the crucible | A5. Skimming the dross. The dross goes into the drosspan, which can be seen in picture A1. Connected at the left side to the ovenframe . |
A.6 Ingots. In the beginning I used muffins to make ingots. Since a while I make those triangular bars. |
 |
 |
 |
| B1. Lifting the crucible out of the oven with the specially designed tong | B2. Pouring the first hole. In the beginning the liquid is hot .... | B3. and can better fill thin voids. Therefore it's neccesary to pour as quickly as possible, without taking risks. |
 |
 |
 |
B5. Pouring in the second hole. The sprues on this mould were to small. |
B6. Pouring in the third hole. Bcause of the small sprues, the small pouringholes and the concave surface ... |
B7. Pouring in the fourth hole. ....the metal flows over the top and contracts together. Thats one of the reasons why one should start with melting more aluminium then strictly needed |
 |
|
C1. Unlocking the cope and drag. I always clamp them together with a bolt and a nut. |
C2. The cope At position "A" can be seen that the form didn't completely fill to the end |
 |
 |
| C3. The drag | C4. Removing the petrobond-sand |
 |
 |
D1. The grip of the sword. It came out nice, only a few nibbly roughenings on the parting line. |
D2. The blade and grip of the sword. Mark the new blade being short due to (a)wrong sprue position (b) metal not hot enough (c) lack of a vent (d) not enough pressure on the fluid. |
 |
 |
D3. The shuriken. Around the center between the spades is a little metal due to crumbling of the petro bond. I think i didn't ram the sand good enough. The downward spade didn't quite fill till the end. Problably due to one of the reasons mentioned at picture D2. |
D4. The toolholder. I tried to do the open parts also but the pieces of rammed petrobond got loose while removing the model. So I removed them all. I think the openings need more taper so the model gets of the sand more easely. |
 |
|
D5. Vacuumnap. It came out well. No sign of shrinkage. I guess it got enough backfeed from the sprue when cooling down. |
D6. Dragbars. These are the bars which wil be cut to pieces. These pieces wil be provide with a guidingpin. A pair of these will couple the cope and drag. |
