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Naturally Aspirated Ribbon Burner. Photo heavy.


Frosty

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Dan, those pics are super helpful!  Thanks so much for taking and posting them.   How are you getting the holes lined up so well?  I doubt it makes much difference, but yours look pro.

i printed a pattern out from fusion, used drill press, even wore my cheaters and it still looks like a drunk monkey drilled the holes.

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7 hours ago, J.Gonzalez said:

Flame was a little reducing

Fantastic that it's working well with 90 holes!  Good additional data.  Did it make the "Organ sound" for the first 10 minutes or until it heated up?  I like it a little reducing - helps prevent scale.  You can also change the jet size to change mix.

DanR

11 minutes ago, Whiskeymike said:

Thanks so much for taking and posting them.   How are you getting the holes lined up so well?  

De nada my friend!  Happy to do it.  CNC mill, not a usual diy'er tool.  Doesn't really matter that much from a practical way.

DanR

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11 hours ago, D.Rotblatt said:

De nada my friend!  Happy to do it.  CNC mill, not a usual diy'er tool.  Doesn't really matter that much from a practical way.

DanR

Ah!  Good idea!    I’ve been looking for an excuse to get an x-carve.  I bet you could do some cool things for making the mold with one.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ok, I’ve reached that phase of the project where the question of “are we having fun yet?” Has a definite no answer!  :)  But, I’m hopefully getting close.

I’ve got the forge built and lined with blanket, rigidized, and Kastolite 30.  I’ve got the Narb built after the first having a failure and loss.  And I’ve fired it for the first time to lackluster results and need to tune further.

I’m using a 1” tube with 1x1.5 T, .45 Mig tip.  I started with MIG tip dead center.  Didn’t like the flame, so I shorten it to where you see it in the picture.   The ribbon burner out of forge picture was with the Mig tip in the center.  The burner in the forge picture is the shortened tip version.  The ribbon burner is 84 1/8” holes.

First time I’ve ever fired it, so some of the orange flames could be the green Kastolite.  But it definitely not the right mixture.   Increasing the PSI didn’t seem to make much difference.

i have a 1x1.25 T ready to go, so will likely try that tomorrow.  Also need to try a new tip and start from the beginning.

i see now what you guys have said about pictures not accurately representing reality.   The Narb outside the forge seemed to have most holes with a flame, and they were almost entirely blue.  In both places, the flames were a good half inch off the surface of the burner.

any thoughts for tomorrow’s next steps?

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That's way too much T for that little burner block. Mine worked best with 19 ea. crayon sized outlets pushed by one 3/4" T. Dan tried 1/8" outlets pushed with a 3/4 inducer and settled on 123 of them, that's about 6x the outlets for the same sq" of burner tube.

If we follow that trend then doubling the inducer sq in and pushing 1/8" outlets I get a top of my head guesstimate for starting experiments at around 250 outlets.

Turning up the psi won't lean the flame out enough to matter. That size inducer feeding that few outlets is probably suffering severe back pressure.

Frosty The Lucky.

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I have a minor difference of opinion on this, but down the same trail.  Try the easy things first.  Change out your mig tip to a smaller one first.  Your "in the forge" pic has WAY too much fuel compared to the air.

My NARB is a bit of a hybrid.  I started off using the 1/2" T burner with a .023 mig tip (which I had previously used as my single port burner) attached to the plenum and found it was always too rich.   I ended up using a schedule 80 3/4" pipe nipple, a 1" x3/4" reducing T, and kept the .023 mig tip to get the flames about neutral.  The point is that I needed to use a larger T and mixing tube for the NARB than I needed for the same mig tip when I used the burner without a multi-port head on it.  YMMV.

The other thing I found with my rig is that if I do not have enough (or large enough) holes, then there is a point at which turning up the pressure wastes more fuel but does very little to increase the forge temperature. 

Oh, and FWIW, my drilled IFB burner head has around 60 1/8" holes in it and I believe it would benefit from another 10 to 20 holes (or enlarging the ones already there).  Keep in mind I'm feeding that with a .023 mig tip and smaller than normal inside diameter 3/4" pipe (schedule 80 as opposed to the normal schedule 40 pipe).

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You're running a 0.023 mig tip in a 3/4" T burner? You must have the jet way close to the mixing tube to keep it from burning lean.

Since the surprising success of the first two NARBs I unscrewed a random T from my shop forge and screwed it to a NARB block and it ran as well as the T I built for it, stable stop to stop on a 0-25 lb. regulator. I haven't tried all my Ts in one of the muti port blocks, I'm not unsure enough to bother. I've pretty much standardized building Ts and rarely have to tune more than a stroke or two of a file. Yeah, the same old: 0.035 mig contact tip, 1" x 3/4" T and a 3/4" x 6" nipple, plumbed to the gas supply as component availability dictates. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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I think we did this before, Frosty.  It's a schedule 80 3/4" pipe nipple, which has an ID between a schedule 40 1/2" and a schedule 40 3/4" pipe.  The mig tip is actually trimmed back past the halfway point in the opening.  I could not get neutral or lean with a schedule 40 1/2" nipple no matter how far back I trimmed the mig tip.    I don't have a problem with scaling in the forge and this is the setup I melted/vitrified the 2300 degree rated IFB, so although it may not be perfect it's good enough for me.

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As Mike started with 045 mig tip, 1 inch mix tube and he is from Texas :P, I am guessing he wants higher outputs.   In spite of that, I am very curious what the 84 ports would do with a 1/2 inch Frosty T.  It would be a much lower output burner, but it beats deep sixing the NARB block.  Good for a second, smaller forge?  

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3 hours ago, Buzzkill said:

I think we did this before, Frosty.  It's a schedule 80 3/4" pipe nipple,

We sure did, I remember my surprise you'd use schd. 40 let alone schd. 80 for a burner tube but you use what you have and made it work. I don't think iron plumbing nipples are schd. 40, not even close till you start talking specialty plumbing. Heck, I've never measured the ID of a plumbing nipple let alone the wall thickness. It was some time before I started deburring them even.

I agree AFB, Mike is going for Texas sized gusto he isn't going to get with what he's put together in that setup. 

Mike: If you're going to try seriously different burners you should start modeling in wood. A wood burner block will only last maybe 15 seconds before the burning wood starts making the flames unreadable but that's long enough. Drilling 84, 1/8" holes in a board that doesn't work is so much less work than casting a refractory block for the result. If you try busting your hard refractory block out of the steel plenum I'll be interested in how much if any damage it does. 

And welcome to the mad scientist burner tinkerers club Mike. :ph34r:

Frosty The Lucky.

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Yea, it basically boils down to 6 months of reading about all of the strategies, retaining 20% and mixing them by accident.  I originally started out with a design needing two 3/4 T Burners, then switched to Forced air ribbon burner, then NARB.  I figured since I was going from two t-burners to one, I better up it to 1”.  As Franken Burner rightly identified, being from Texas, anything worth building is worth overbuilding! :D When I got to drilling the holes in the mold, I got intimidated with successfully doing such density and I remembered the hole count for forced air or NARB with crayons and went with that, not considering naturally aspirated needs.   It’s all part of the learning process for me.
 

I had cut out the sheet metal for two plenums, so I can assemble that one, try some wood inserts, make a new bottom plate and lay in the Kastolite.   While it’s curing I can change to a smaller tip, then try to drill out the holes to 5/16th.   If it survives, I can always use it on a different forge.

thanks for the help guys.

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I wouldn't jump too fast.  If you are talking about drilling out the 84 1/8 to 5/16, that would be too fast.  If you deviate from the 1/8 inch, then you can get into flash back territory.  This is a balancing act.  Frosty's 3/4 has nineteen 5/16" holes.  Something tells me 84 at 5/16" would be grossly too many for a one inch.  Though, I don't recommend trying to drill cured kastolite.  I think you will just break it.   

If you could successfully drill it, I would say in small steps.  Go to 3/16 then 1/4.  You can't go back so you can't bracket this.  This is why Frosty advised using wood blocks before casting another one.

Change one thing at a time.  If you were to drill the block and change orifice sizes at the same time, the new running conditions would tell you nothing in relation to each change.

I say all this because at this point, you are not building a burner, you are designing one.  As you see, there is more to it than just pushing fuel down a pipe.  

I think the mad scientists tinkerer's club needs a patch.  

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Yep, I appreciate it.  I didn’t have much time today, so the only thing I got done was changing to a .25 tip from the .45 tip and it behaved much better.  The sound was much more what I was expecting and it was hotter.  Still not right, but changing the tip definitely improved it.  I noticed my regulator had a slight leak, so had to hang it up.  Ordered a new one and will resume later in the week.  Pic attached, but it was pretty bright out, so hard to see the flames.

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On 11/17/2019 at 6:13 PM, Whiskeymike said:

84 1/8” holes.

J.Gonzalez made his with 90 holes @.125" and messaged me the other day that it's working fine.  You're 1" burner is just oversized for the number of holes you have.  Switch to a 3/4" burner and it may work just fine. See my discussion with J.Gonzalez over the past page or two.  I'd suggest a stock 3/4" Frosty 'T' burner as a starting point - that gives you access to the creator himself if you need help tuning it.

I'm starting to think that my 124 holes are too many, thus the organ sound.  But once up to heat it's working sweet.  Forging at half the pressure I used to, welding easily (except I have a soft brick floor...:unsure:) - but other mods have been made including a 3D printed inducer with slightly larger tip (using the 3D printer tip drilled out to .040), and a smaller interior forge size.  Been fine tuning lots of variables one at a time.

DanR

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Thanks Dan.   Does the tube and T really affect anything?  (assuming it’s not too small and constricting flow). If the air flow drawn in is a combination of pressure and orifice size, should I need to go to a 3/4?

New regulator should arrive tomorrow.  Looking forward to trying a few more things.

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5 hours ago, Whiskeymike said:

Does the tube and T really affect anything?

Frosty's territory for the 'T'.  But yes, in general the gas/air mixture and performance of naturally aspirated burners is defined by a number of variables such as jet size, mixing tube size (both width and length), intake size, jet placement, Nozzle size and length.  They all interact and, within some mysterious tolerance, all need to be right to get good performance.  Generally, if you increase the size of the mixing tube, the jet size needs to increase, as well as the intake size.  You are basically scaling up or down the whole burner.  What is recommended is the result of lots of peoples experiments, and a lot of trial and error in the community.

On 11/19/2019 at 7:42 AM, Another FrankenBurner said:

Change one thing at a time.

Listen to this advice!  It is necessary when trouble shooting or, as A.F. said, designing a new burner type.  Try one thing.  If it gets better, keep it and try another or follow that lead.  IF it gets worse, go back to the way it was (if possible) and try a new direction.  

For everybody else, I didn't mean to stomp on anyone else's suggestions, just felt I had some information that others didn't.  

DanR

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1 hour ago, D.Rotblatt said:

Generally, if you increase the size of the mixing tube, the jet size needs to increase, as well as the intake size.  You are basically scaling up or down the whole burner.

Mixing tube length is also affected by the diameter of the mixing tube. Nearly every problem with a T burner I've read about that isn't a tuning issue usually comes back to a measurement in the original build plan not being followed.

Pnut

 

Edited by pnut
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Worth repeating: "Nearly every problem with a T burner I've read about that isn't a tuning issue usually comes back to a measurement in the original build plan not being followed."

There are innumerable posts that basically say "I followed the directions EXACTLY only changing a couple of things...due to it being too much of a bother to search out the correct stuff or due to the person with no background or experience deciding they know better than the designer with both!

Thomas the tired and grumpy, Had to breakdown the sets after the production last night and had way too little sleep---and will miss the cast party as I'm teaching smithing in Albuquerque Saturday, (I just go to Albuquerque and turn left...)

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On 11/21/2019 at 8:09 AM, ThomasPowers said:

Varmints are always in season!

What's the limit during tourist season?

Whiskymike: YES diameter and length make a difference, everything's a ratio based on tube diameter at the throat. The throat is the narrowest part of the bore where the tube begins. In the case of a T burner it's the end of the mixing tube where it screws into the T.

The ratios are listed in the instructions post. If you just follow them the ONLY tuning adjustment necessary is the length of the mig contact tip jet.

You are reading so many opinions from folk who have no idea how a NA burner works but have managed to make a flame sort of. They have an internet connection and a camera so they're experts. Ron Reil won't even respond to questions from folk who won't follow his directions, he lost all patience trying to help correct problems caused by not following the directions. 

Pick ONE set of plans and follow THEM. I don't mind helping but you're all over the landscape, I point out one problem and you change something else. Hmmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

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