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I Forge Iron

Home build induction heater


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First test of a IH that my brother is currently building, heats 1/4" stock to orange in about 8 seconds running at 1/3 power. Very rough set up, will all be contained in the case when its tuned and complete, more pics and videos to come tomorrow(7/8/12).

Will have digital controls and other blacksmith friendly features.

July2012314.jpg

July2012316.jpg

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im getting this one, good price , and you can make it any size...


http://www.fluxeon.c...ual_rev_1.0.pdf


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...
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Pretty cool pictures! I would recomend using smaller diameter copper tube for your coil, fewer turns spread farther apart at a higher amperage setting... Also your losing the effect of both the top and bottom coils because your leads back to the machine do not make a full loop. I realize your just testing and playing but a better fitting coil will make a huge diffrence in the efficency of the power transfer too... you could probably heat a larger part faster in that coil than you can the small material...

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Sorry I didnt put more pictures up like I said, brother had to go out of town but will be back soon, I will update as we go. He did get that little bar to heat up in about 3 seconds before he left though!

Ironsmith - He does have some of the schematics on another site, I'll see if I can get the link from him.

Larry - Thanks for the info on the coil, we definitely plan on trying all different types of them, I had thicker material that we were going to test cause we figured the setup we were using would have better penetration on larger material, but will have to wait till he is back.

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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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John good to have you! Nice to have guys who understand the tech side of these machines, I wish I had a better understanding of the mechanics involved. The machines I import in the 15KW size have a range of 30khz to 100khz and that seems to be ideal for blacksmithing operations.. The larger 25KW machines have a bit narrower range of 30khz to 80khz...

John will your machines be water cooled? Many of the operations I use my machine for the machine is running at close to full power full time... I have coils made that I rotate parts in and out with several parts always being heated so I can keep up with work ( there is always a hot part)

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Lol dont worry about it, being the only active thread in this whole section there is room for discussions. We are going to properly wind the coil and use some 1/4 inch tubing, I have a couple questions about your machines too Ill pm you later.

Ill keep adding updates as I can, Wednesday we may have some more to footage, my brother should be able to have a more solid setup running. He is waiting on stonger mosfets before a full power setup.

Quick Q for Larry and John, If either of you guys have a "kill a watt" reader or similar thing, what are the voltamps of your machines when they are running and heating something?


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Well mathematically I should be about 10,000 watts input.... The machine I use in my production is a 25KW 420V three phase with a rated input of 23A so if you do the math that’s 9660 watts... As far as empirically measuring the input since its 420V three phase Im not sure how you could measure, maybe a amp clamp but I think you would have to isolate a single leg of the cord... I currently don’t have a 15KW set up in the shop but I will have soon.. I got one on its way that I plan on using as a demo unit...

On a side note I have two machines, A 15KW self contained single phase unit and a 15KW split transformer unit that both need repairs... I don’t even know what is wrong with them, they were at Grants shop when I packed up his stuff and I brought them home figuring if nothing else they would make good spares..... Since your brother seems to be both knowledgeable about induction and electronics maybe I should send you one and see if you can figure out its issues? The guy who Grant used to have do repairs on the machines had a stroke and is not in such good shape these days and I have not found anyone local who wants to work on them... There are very few (Grant has sold over 300 machines and have had a total of 5 machines have fail in the last 8 years) but when they do have issues it would sure be nice to have someone to trouble shoot.... I can order all the major machine parts individually so repair should just mean figuring out what module or component is bad and replacing it..

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Oh ya I forgot you were running 3phase, that's fine.


Talked to my brother and he would be interested in checking out the machines, if they are designed in any way similar to other induction systems he should be able to find the issue. Check your pm.

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Quick video - Running just under 1kw, Heating 1/4 inch round, heats up the larger stuff nicely too, videos of that later. 3kw is going to be great!

http://s1059.photobucket.com/albums/t440/ArgyllHammer/Induction/?action=view&current=video-2012-07-15-12-30-52.mp4

th_video-2012-07-15-12-30-52.jpg

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Yep just pumping tap water through it, will either have a hookup to the water source or have a pump and just have a water bucket like we've been using, works fine. Not worried about calcium buildup, it would take forever for that to happen and just running some vinegar or CLR through it would clear it out.

No fan on the heatsink, those are the mosfets on there and they stay cold on that thing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here are a few videos of it running on 220 and also it now has a power factor of .99 making it super efficient and even more powerful! 15kva and 15kw are not always the same this one is running at a true 15kw do to the power factor control, it also eliminates the need for the big blue tank capacitor which will make it a very small 15kw unit.

One thing that will make this great for anyone to use is this same machine can be hooked to 120 or 220 and it automatically adjusts itself, at 120 its 5kw and at 220 its 15kw, if we had access to 3phase we could run it at 30kw.

This unit is nearly done, the boards are about to be made so that the messy looking breadboard setup will be done away with, then it will be tested heavily to work out any final kinks and we will try to build a few more.

Check the description in the videos to see when the machine is turned on.



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