JLP Blacksmith Teaching Center.

[jlpservicesinc]

The pallet racking here needs to be organized more so some of the heavier items can be put on the bottom shelves.. 

[George N. M.]

Jennifer,

First, glad to have you back. We (I) have missed you.

Second, cool new (to you) toys.  Being able to have a big mobile lifting device will make you life a lot easier.  That is what has limited me on a number of things in the shop, not being able to unload or move heavy things around.  About a year ago I passed on a good deal on a Little Giant because I didn't have a way to bring it home or install it.

Third, the new furry companion looks like a good addition too.  Needs more head scritches though.

George

[gewoon ik]

Ha jen you are thouwing out of your block of ice apparently. Good to see the updates

[jlpservicesinc]

Lots of work done since my last post..  I have reached the point where it's time to start letting things go. 

I have all 3 compressors working nicely. The Mattei is a ERC511L and all the parts are still available. 

The American Kellogg, though the parts are NLA.. But it runs nice and puts out a bunch of air 94cfm at 125psi.. Of course it sounds like a figher jet taking off.. 3500rpms of rotary screw at the motor.. I think it's spinning somewhere around 5000rpms. 

I painted the inside of the Kellogg unit. Also did some welding of supports under the oil separator.  It was sagging some. 


George the new doggy is now with us just a few days short of a year.   He's doing very well and has many,many skritches.. 

He's my little buddy and goes to work with me when he wants to.. 

Contorl box is one on the Mattei..  

[Frosty]

No pictures of George!! Have you learned nothing from us? As much as we love to see projects, machinery, tools, pics of children and pets are way up there on the list. 

On a more serious note, you've been building an industrial level operation and the compressors are so far out of my ball park I don't follow at all. Other than you're trying to rebuild out of service and support antiques. 

I wish I had a fraction of your determination.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

17 hours ago, Frosty said:

No pictures of George!! Have you learned nothing from us? As much as we love to see projects, machinery, tools, pics of children and pets are way up there on the list. 

On a more serious note, you've been building an industrial level operation and the compressors are so far out of my ball park I don't follow at all. Other than you're trying to rebuild out of service and support antiques. 

I wish I had a fraction of your determination.

Frosty The Lucky.

Frosty I posted a photo of Odie earlier..  George commented on the "skritches". 

Here is one that I hope helps.. 

[George N. M.]

That is one ferocious predator.  You really need to be cautious around him.  If you give him just one too few skritches I don't want to think about what could happen.

The other George

[Frosty]

Not surprised, have I EVER bragged about my memory? I see George is as indifferent to our thoughts of propriety as any self respecting dog. Baxter on the rare occasion he spends lap time he's almost more likely to sleep on his back between your legs facing the other way.

Rhonda shamelessly practices manipulative adorability on anyone she can reach. 

I hope Odie and George will forgive me if I wish skritches on them every now and then.

Like now. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

so, its been a bit.  Picked up this 3 powered metal roller few weeks back.  5HP, triple reduction gear drive.

here is a video of it running. It's turning to fast for me./ I'll have to slow it down with a VFD

[Frosty]

I can see how that's uncomfortably fast for someone not used to operating one. Where is the pic of the gear drive? I see a chain & sprocket in the 3rd. pic down. If that's part of the drive then it shouldn't be too difficult to slow down.

Also old gear reduction drives are made to change out gears for specific output rpm. 

Of course with the age of that roll a VFD will probably be way easier to find. 

Remember to give Odie a Frosty scritchin please.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

Im used to hand crank roll hoop benders and a gear reduced electric. 

Using this in a school environment I can see where there would be potential for problems.  

Using a full torque vfd would help a lot with roll speed and someone getting caught. 

The chain drive you are seeing is to adjust the 3rd roller position. 

 

The handle on. Top when turned moves the threaded rods and the roller up and down. 

 

I have not been able to find any direct information on the machine. Ive scanned a few of the "Excelsior " catalogs and extrapolate the date of mfg.  I doubt its correct but close enough.  

[Frosty]

Yeah, I agree you don't want newbies playing with it. If I had a use myself I'd put a lockout on it and only let advanced students or trained employees use it. The problem with a VFD is they're too easy to turn up and students always over estimate their abilities. Could put it on it's own breaker, you have that big panel.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

Frosty, I have metal boxes and put some plexi on the top to see it. easy enough to setup a lock box kind of deal with remote on off. 

Here is the latest and last major addition. 

It is a pretty much self contained oil fired crucible furnace.  Found  out by the cape.  Stunning deal. 

Needs some love as all the things I pick up do. 

The blower needs some rehab.  It has a completely adjustable nozzle. It needs to be relined but most of the bricks are there. 

[Frosty]

HOLY MACKEREL, how much do you figure the melter will pour? Can you tell what it was used for? I'd guess marine bronze but . . . 

You're going to replace the firebrick? Rehabbing firebrick that's been sitting in the weather for years is time and labor intensive and a gamble.

You know, you could rent small cabins to tinkerers for good money and let them rebuild some of your loot. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

Frosty I love the idea of renting out cabins to tinkers to rebuild the loot.

 

The place looked to be a car repair or heavy equipment place..   I'd lean more towards car repair.  From what I can tell the unit was fired with used oil. 

It seems to me that alum splatter was around the base.. So my guess is they were throwing in complete transmissions, rims and such and melting out the alum for scrap. 

 

It tilts both directions so guessing one side was discharge and the other was to dump the left over steel on the other side. 

[Frosty]

Sounds like a salvage yard or perhaps that was a sideline of a mechanic operation. I think you're right, that looks like a heavy oil burner, I believe that little pin in the center of the nozzle is an oil preheater. Light it with kerosene and once warmed up switch to heavy oil, the red hot pin would vaporize heavy oil so it'd burn like a gas. A shop looking to dispose of old trannies, aluminum blocks, heads, etc. would have lots of old oil to dispose of too.

Is the crucible large enough to take whole cases or do they need to be broken up?

Going to put it back to work? You could add casting to the learning center's curriculum. Hmmmmm?

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

The furnace was designed as a dribble, or pouring unit. 

Primarily for alum would be my guess.

It has 2 spouts. One at the bottom and 1 at the top. 

Ive attached a file on this burner

 It will burn nearly any fluid the is kerosene or thicker up to bunker 6 with heated lines.

 

Its a low velocity burner vs one that runs off a high pressure compressor.

 

So the roots blower gives plenty of volume and pressure. The guy who built it looks like he had some knowledge.  It has a built in air accumulator to buffer the pump cycles and an overpressure relief valve so it will only produce a certain psi and that's it. 

The burner will turn so it does not bang into the vessel when its rotated to pour or dump what's inside. 

I called it a crucible furnace because that's kind of the current plan. Though I'll fire it up and see what we get. 

If it reaches the golden temperature for cast iron then that's the direction it will go towards. 

If it does not, I'll try to work out how to get it there. 

I have a fully equipped nonferous foundry.   3 mullers and all the bobs and bits. Ive got a jolt machine and a core eater. 

The idea behind this was to move so I could start the ball with getting to cast iron. 

Its basically a cupola as it sits now. 

Techrite-Controls-Hauck-Hauck-780-Series-Burner-1609.pdf

 

 

 

 

[Frosty]

WOW, that's a lot more data than I needed! Still I get the idea and I was pleased to see the needle thing in the center of the burner nozzle is the fuel atomizer, close enough to my guess for an old fart anyway.

Anyone who used the melter for a given metal would just install an appropriate blower and forget about calculations and adjustments. An accumulator and waste gate in the circuit is normal for Roots blowers if it's feeding a sensitive device.

If it's set up as a cupola why change it? Not many iron founders of any reasonable scale lift the crucible out of the furnace. Even the best high strength crucibles are scary fragile at molten iron temps. 

You need safe ladles to handle and pour but those are pretty straight forward and you can train the second person in minutes. I do advise rehearsing the moves before you tap the melter but I expect you would anyway.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

Frosty the owner died so finding out information about the unit has been one of self discovery and lots of probing questions to the guy I bought it from.

I dont think this was used by a foundry so as you specified the set it and forget it was not in the mix.

Using parts he probably ran into or collected used is more the case. 

Like mentioned he must have had some idea or did enough research to help with surging of the air. 

 

Why change it?   like anything that is unknown the question becomes one of costs vs what is there. 

I dont make assumptions anymore as it has proven to never coincidence.

So I will grab my 27gallon pressurized oil feeder tank and hook it up to the filter. 

Ill start a fire in the container and see if the oil catches. Ill keep a propane torch handy to light off is needed. I dont see a built in measure to start it. 

 

I do have an oil burner igniter so will see about rigging it up. 

 

Until I get it sorted nearly all the information is mere speculation. 

Nothing is written in stone on any of this stuff. 

[Frosty]

Yeah, doing this kind of thing is something you do all the time on one machine or another. I was more brainstorming ideas and thoughts. No solid plans at this point is just common sense I suppose. 

I've just never seen a machine or tool I recognize without thinking about possible uses for it. A melter that size is like imagination gold.

Frosty the Lucky.

 

[jlpservicesinc]

Frosty I am all for brainstorming..   Heck, often I have both high winds and rain in my brain. 

Something that plagues me all the time is the fact that "information," though this is supposed to be the information age, is lacking on nearly everything I own. 

If you have ideas about any of this stuff as to moving forwards I certainly invite your input. 

I'm going to wait on the bricks to see about getting it running.  I'll run it some and let it cool off.. Maybe I can get most the water out and then cover it so it can stay dry. 

It did have a cover on it at some point that was hinged but long gone now.  

I'm going to fill up the pressure oil feeder tank and see what I can come up with.. 

What would you do for an ignition system? 

[Frosty]

Ayup, and with the wind and rain comes the flash of lightning that makes it work. 

I hear you, used to be you could do a web search and find all sorts of good information but marketers discovered it and instead of the information age we live in the mass marketing age. <sigh>

I'd see about buying an igniter for an oil boiler, maybe talk to a heating supply or maybe one of the repair guys. Otherwise, even though we've had an oil boiler for a couple decades I only know which buttons and in which order to reset the thing and the heating tech's number in my contacts. And a propane torch for backup.

Drying it out should be easy without having to baby sit it, toss in a couple bags of charcoal briquets and fire it overnight. I like it way better than building a wood or lump charcoal fire to drive off the hygroscopic moisture in bricks, old refractory, etc. Briquets are made to burn slowly so whatever you're drying out rises above 212f slowly and is much less likely to steam spall.

I don't know how starting and stopping an oil burner like that one might effect it and you certainly wouldn't want to let it run more than a minute or so or bricks will start popping.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

I've done a bunch of research and have been involved with NORA. https://noraweb.org/

 

Since the 5 fuel furnace in the school basically uses this same tech..   The only thing that is foreign is the tiles that are mentioned in the literature.  

Just like a gas forge the reflective radiant heat helps a bunch with clean burn and max BTU..    If oil fires to slowly you end up with smoke and soot ( to much fuel, not enough air, not enough radiant heat). 

I have a bunch of transformers and electrodes..  I might at some point put a cad cell in and run an oil control..  Be a great safety device instead of a flame out and oil everywhere.

I'm on my way out now to give it a whirl.   If I have any results I'll let you know. 

[Frosty]

Don't quote me but IIRC many of the old "experts" called anything but common fire brick "tiles."

The heat is not "reflected by the refractory layer, it is "Radiated." The amount of IR energy actually reflected by a refractory is insignificant though calling it reflection is common it's not what's really happening to any meaningful degree. 

Don't worry about soot, it will burn off as the furnace heats up unless the burner is burning too rich. To eliminate warm up soot you'd need to run the burner lean or have a real time controllable fuel air mixture. Burning used oil makes this enough of a problem to control, letting it burn off at heat is probably the best practical solution.

Bear in mind ANY used lube oil WILL have metallic and other wear contaminants in the exhaust that are too expensive to filter out in any realistic sense. Before I retired the state decided they could save most of the heating bill for the Heavy Duty equipment shop if it burned all the used oil generated AND save the cost of disposal. Woo HOO until they discovered AFTER they bought a multi fuel waste oil boiler that in itself cost about 3-4 years heating budget that to pass EPA requirements the filtration and chemical neutralization equipment cost more to operate than the replacement price of the shop and equipment every few years depending on the oil burned. 

Filtering and neutralizing contaminants in the exhaust to meet EPA and state regs was insanely expensive. 

Heck, remember the fad for using used cooking oil for fuel? Ever wonder what happened to that? Just the filtration equipment and upkeep made buying diesel and heating oil cheaper. 

Sorry for the sidetrack. I'd put it away from any habitations and if possible stay away while it's heating up and wear PPE when you're around it.

Frosty The Lucky.

[jlpservicesinc]

totally agree..  Here in MA oil fired anything is on the decline.. In new contruction there can be no oil fired furnaces or boilers.  

Gas, electric, geothermal only. 

There are lots of videos of using used oil to melt cast iron in other countries.  

In the USA well, oil forges and furnaces from the traditional aspect not so much.. 

There is a lot of new/old tech, though on the process using propane to bring it up to temp and then switching over. 

I was able to get the tilt mech and lock working today. 

I also took the filter apart and cleaned the housing..   This is an awesome filter.  It has a built in scraper..  The schmutz falls to the bottom of the filter to be cleaned out later. 

The unit will spin completely around. 

I'm stoked about this setup.. Lots of potential..  I paid 100.00 for the whole assembly. 

The gear motor should be pulled off and cleaned.  I'll do that over the next week or so.  

I was able to dump all the dirt and stuff in the furnace.