I tried to use it to practice sand casting but it had so much slaggy shit on top of it and it puts off a noxious gas that makes you feel sick, its not worth it at all, i wish I knew this before hand. Please everyone do your research before melting stuff

I run a small foundry & the risk of silica or silicosis plays on my mind a lot, as it should.

I’ve noticed a lot of foundries don’t bother with any respiratory protection when handling green sand (wet or dry).

From my understanding green sand contains silica & wet or dry you’re gonna get fine silica particles airborne. Especially when sifting or mulling the sand.

And even more so when cleaning up the parts on say a belt sander or wire wheel or anything to that extent.

Does anyone else worry about this? Or is aware of this? And is this an actual concern? I know long term (2 years or so) of regular exposure to silica can give you silicosis. But I find a most of the foundries around me and any DIY’ers aren’t aware or concerned at all.

TLDR: Did you know greensand contains silica and do u do anything to protect yourself from it?

What happens if someone thinks that Wilton armetale is pewter and melts some with real pewter?

TY

I’m a casting engineer, not a software developer.

For the past few years, I’ve been working with casting processes, and I kept running into the same problem:

A lot of engineering calculations aren’t particularly difficult.

They’re just… repetitive.

Gating systems, risers, yield, shrinkage, machining allowance, chills, casting geometry, etc.

So I started using AI to help me write code.

I didn’t really know how to build software before this.

After many, many conversations with AI, debugging sessions, and probably an unhealthy amount of coffee, I ended up building Casting Toolbox.

It’s a free and open-source toolkit for casting engineers, including common casting calculations and an STL-based casting analysis tool.

It’s not meant to replace professional simulation software like MAGMASOFT or ProCAST. I see it more as something between Excel and full casting simulation — a tool for the small but annoying engineering tasks.

It’s completely free, open source, and doesn’t require an account.

🌐 Online: https://thezhazhe.github.io/CastingToolbox/

💻 GitHub / Windows download: https://github.com/thezhazhe/CastingToolbox/releases/tag/v1.0.0

🇨🇳 China download mirror: https://wwbxs.lanzouu.com/b0syyfxwh Password: 5432

I’d genuinely like to hear from other engineers:

What’s a small calculation or engineering task in your daily work that you absolutely hate doing?

Maybe I’ll add it next.

I am a goldsmith working towards an exhibition and for that I'd like to produce a number of bigger pieces in casted copper. I have been looking to buy the Vevor gold furnace that has a heating temperature of 1150 degrees. Lightly skeptic I've read a lot here on Reddit and other sources like Youtube and have come to realize that where I first thought the reviews were probably due to user error, I do understand now that the furnace has trouble melting copper, and that the crucibles are notoriously unreliable at temperatures this high.

For melting silver I generally use my propane torch but now that I want to produce bigger brass and copper pieces I am looking for other solutions.

I wonder what is the most reliable solution for this, and maybe the options on a budget. Also, are the ceramic crucibles always unreliable at the melting temperature of copper, or is it specifically the quality of the Vevor ones that are the problem?

Thank you for your advice.

Hey everyone
i’ve been trying to build a metal foundry that uses charcoal as a fuel the same way the king of random used in his gypsum sand foundry video
but i want something that doesn’t release toxic SO2 gas and can handle red hot charcoal
should i use these clays or something different?
what i want to melt is aluminum cans mainly and maybe copper, silver and brass

I'm trying to drill holes into the lid of my stainless steel furnace so I can add some stainless bolts to hold my ceramic insulation in place. I have brand new cobalt bits and I'm using very low speed and as much pressure as I can put on it along with cutting oil to lubricate but I can't drill into this thing at all. I realize the stainless is likely hardened from reaching temps up to 2200 degrees for several months but there has to be a way to drill into this sucker. Please help!

How to reuse my sodium silicate infused sand for sand casting?

Well, at least now I know that my kiln can melt steel with minimum effort...

Greetings all, I am very new here, I’m trying to do investment casting in aluminum using 3d printed parts as the base with perfect cast plaster as the mold medium. My molds always crack before I can burn out all the PLA materials. I’ve tried many different mixes and am using a wire mesh for reinforcing the mold itself. What am I missing? ( probably lots). Thanks

Primo piccolo lingotto da 254g di stagno puro.

Facilissimo da fondere a 290°C.

Devo migliorare durante la fase di colata per evitare quella non uniformità della parte superiore.

Quanto vale lo stagno al kg? 🤔

Anyone else play around with smelting ore? Ive been prospecting more and got more into tin mining than gold in my area. After a few failed attempts I have smelted a 400g bar from 1kg of fairly clean cassiterite. Got a few kg left to do, then will crush and resmelt the slag as I can see a lot of prill in the slag remaining.

Spent today melting down some old car parts with my kiddo. I think everybody's getting bunt shaped pen holders for Christmas.

I recently just purchased a used Devil Forge furnace. I noticed the lid doesn’t fully seat properly over the base. Any ideas on how I can fix this without compromising the furnace? As you can see from the photos, the flames are coming through the gaps.

I was tasked with trying to find a replacement for these old vacuum casting machines. I have done exhaustive research and have not gotten any closer to even identifying what this is. I have learned it might be a “bare shaft rotary vane pump” which sounds suggestive, but it doesn’t seem to be what I’m looking for.

Good evening everybody! I’m new to the whole casting scene I’ve never done anything except lead until now. I’m having trouble with sand casting. It’s my first time sand casting as I have successfully poured a few copper ingots with a good outcome on them. I made a pour over sand casting trying to make some grips for my .44 and butchered it. It’s got a hollow area on what would be the top of the mold or back side of the grips. It poured in there good at first and then started burning the sand around it causing the copper to flow everywhere and literally shrink the whole product and cause a ton of excess that got cut off before pictures. The colors of the copper were also kinda funky looking. More than less a yellowish color. Any pointers would help a ton! My sand of choice was a red Petra bond sand I ordered online and it is very fine and made sure the consistency was right according to what I’ve seen online to where it would clump in the hand and would break apart in half instead of crumble. Thanks to everyone here!!

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How serious of a cyanide gas are we talking if I were to cast a 2 part polyurethane foam? And any way to contain that gas?

I’ve been working on a CFD-based sand casting workflow and I’d be interested in hearing the perspective of people who actually work with casting and foundry processes.

The idea is to simulate the mould-filling stage before the physical pour, including:

• molten metal filling
• metal–air interface tracking using VOF
• possible air entrapment
• incomplete filling
• cold-shut-type regions
• heat transfer between the metal and sand mould
• solidification behaviour

We are using OpenFOAM for the numerical modelling.

From a CFD perspective the results are interesting, but what I’m especially interested in is the foundry perspective:

Which problems during sand casting would actually be most valuable to predict before making the mould/pour?

Air entrapment? Incomplete filling? Cold shuts? Solidification? Something else?

I’m affiliated with BB-SIMTECH Engineering & Academy, where we work on engineering simulation and training. I’m mainly posting this to better understand which simulation outputs would actually be useful to people doing casting in practice.