TECH- How to SAND CAST Aluminum Car Club plaques at Home!!!

Chris great post man. I dig it and cant wait to give it a go. I havent sand casted since high school. made all kinds of dumb stuff in that class.

by the way. how are those Buick drums working out for you? you should cast some of those!!!

We should have a beer sometime. its nice to hang out with like minded fellas from time to time.

 

Thanks for taking your time to show us how it's done.

I live close to the Alcoa, Tennessee plant where they always have flat-bed semi's with massive crucibles chained to them full of molten aluminum coming and going.

Don't like to be near them on the highway.

 

Very good post and really nice plaque too!

Dennis

 

very cool

 

High Praise from the Plaque Man himself!

 

Thanks... I haven't got around to using them yet but you know how that goes. Somehow I just don't feel confident in my casting ability to make something I use for stopping... Oh and yes we should definately hang out sometime. Us santa cruz hot rodders don't hang out often enough.

 

Nice tech and descriptions with pics. As the HAMB metallurgist, one small correction: Aluminum and it's alloys melt around 1000-1200 F. Pure aluminum melts highest, alloys lower the melting point. Still very hot and the molten metal is dangerous. Of course you need to heat it above the melting point and have some residual heat capacity so it stays liquid when pouring, to prevent cold shuts. Adding risers as you stated is needed to prevent shrinkage porosity.

Good job!

 

Hell yeah!

 

thankyou! love learning new skills. love the H.A.M.B.

 

What awsome tech!!! One of the coolest I have seen in a while, very helpfull, and cant wait to try it out.

Buzz

 

Thanks for all the kind words! Remember to vote for tech week!
-Chris

 

just voted !!!

 

Very cool and thorough tech article!

 

Thanks for the support guys! Keep them votes coming!

 

Great Job!

 

Excellent idea, good pictures and descriptions. Top notch thread!!!


"...you could burn a hole through your weiner..." ...lol...

 

I've never voted for Tech Week...where do we do that?

 

Thanks!... This was kind of the idea, It took me awhile to decide what to do a tech post about, and I finally settled on one that almost every car builder could do, and has most of the equipment for. I also wanted to make sure I covered evey detail of the process, hopefully to help eliminate issues that can arise doing it the first time. After all thats what a tech post it all about right? A clear concise posting that walks someone through all the steps on how to do something in order to eliminate the trial and error in doing something the first time. Thanks Again guys!

 

Great Tech!

 

Awesome tech, home castings are cool.-Weeks

 

Thanks I always wondered how they did sand castings.

 

The outer jig that keeps all the sand in place looks like a section of a meatloaf pan. If you didn't want to make one yourself, could you just cut the bottom out of a pan and use that? I don't see why it wouldn't work as long as the sides didn't bow out when tamping down the sand.

 

Never even thought of that! But thats a great idea! Just make sure you cut out the bottom, you could even leave an 1/8th inch lip on the part of the pan you put against the buck for rigidity... as long as it didn't come in contact with the buck/pattern it would be fine!. This is why I love the hamb! inguenuity at its finest.
thanks,
Chris

 

Could probably get by with the cake pan, but the mold flask has to be rigid when packing. Otherwise the flex in the flask will loosen other areas that were already packed. You won't notice til after pouring, and will wonder how all that mold penetration got there. Somebody who's packed a thousand molds can probably use a cake pan with success. Somebody in their backyard should think about a rigid flask.

(mold penetration is when the metal penetrates the sand facecoat, making a big goober of sand & metal, usually part of the goober is within the casting and can't be cutoff)

If anyone is thinking of doing this at home, remember every extra hour you put into mold quality will save 2 hours of metal-finishing/welding on the casting. Good luck!

 

Great tech! Best casting info I've seen so far. I know I'm gonna try it. Good luck!

 

Pins & Needles, since this thread is getting so much traffic I'm gonna hijack it for a sales pitch........

The american foundry industry is in desperate need of technical talent. There's less than a dozen colleges offering foundry specific degrees. If any young hot rodders are looking for a career that will back the moving truck up to your door and pay a great salary, foundry engineering is it. If you have a resume on any of the major job search sites that says foundry.....your phone will ring every other week with recruiters. Even in the "down" economy, fresh graduates are taking their choice of +$50K positions.

Earlier I made a comment that foundrywork is as much art as science. This is why hot rodders natually excel. A guy with some mechanical talent and a little common sense can go head to head with a PhD and come out on top.

Plus you get to light shit on fire. There's something primally satisfying about conquering mother nature to the extent a foundryman does.

 

Wow, this was great!

I'm a mechanical engineering student and recently took the manufacturing processes class where we learned about casting, so this was great! Really neat seeing something I learned put into use.

 

And you don't have to worry about being cold in the Winter.
I've been doing it for 45 years.

 

A good trick is to take a ball of your sand maybe like golf ball size and squeeze the hell out of it then break it in half, if it breaks clean the moisture is about right.

With alum. the surface you want to look the best put it down ( in the drag ) in the mold, dirt sand floats to the top in alum. sinks in steel.

 

Very cool post, one of the coolest I've read in a while. Makes me want to get my buddies together and decide on a name and make some. Thanks for the inspiration. This should be on the Friday Art Show!~ Great job!!!