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I Forge Iron

neonjohn

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Posts posted by neonjohn


  1. That thing will not hold up to use as a "forge" Its designed to heat up a single item one time such as a stuck bolt... It will not have the duty cycle to do any actual "work" with it.... I think you would be better off with a propane burner than that thing if the intent is to do blacksmith type work...


    Hi, John DeArmond here. Chief Engineer of Fluxeon.

    I agree with your advice that the Roy is not a suitable forging heater for anything but the smallest items. While it will "hold up", it simply won't make the necessary power. 1500 watts isn't enough power for serious forging. And as the case temperature reaches its maximum setpoint, the processor ramps the power back to control the heating.

    The good news is that we're developing a 5 and a 10kW heater designed for blacksmithing. In addition to my own blacksmithing experience, we have a blacksmith who is partially sponsoring the development and so the heater will be designed for proper blacksmith heating. Stay tuned to the http://www.fluxeon.com site.

    Meanwhile a couple of bits of advice to you guys who are making heaters. The first and probably most important bit of advice is, don't go too high in frequency. The higher the frequency, the thinner the penetration depth from skin effect (rule of thumb: penetration in mm = 400/sqrt(frequency)) thins and so does the thickness that the heat is deposited in. If the penetration depth is too thin and the power high enough for rapid heating then it is possible to heat the surface to working temperature while the inside is still relatively cold. That can lead to cracking of the surface.

    Ideally the penetration depth should be about 1/3 the diameter of the piece. If the frequency is too low and the penetration depth is too great, the fields will cancel in the interior of the piece and iit will never rise above the Curie point. So it's best to err a bit on the side of high frequency. We're working in the 20 to 80kHz range (it will be user-changeable) with the expectation that must 'smithing jobs will be done in the 30kHz range.

    If I can be of any assistance, please let me know.

    John
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