Insane Furnace of Satan

[man.electric]

I forgot that I had this thing tucked in the back of the basement until a recent clean up of my loading hoard. It was gently used in a lab for testing samples before I found it and brought it home. I still haven't found a use for the 2500 degree giant, but this weekend I am going to give her a new Omron PID for a digital touch. If anyone can give me creative ideas of what to heat in this pig, I am all ears.

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[docone31]

With that rig, you can burn out flasks, you can make Mokume'Gane billets, you can do enameling.
You could alloy non-ferrous alloys, but a Ferris Electro-Melt furnace would be faster.
To do a good burn out, wax up, invest, Then after skin off let sit for 2hrs and then put upside down at low temp, about 500* overnight. Then bring it up to 1400* for 2hrs and then bring back down. 900* is a good all around detail oriented temp.
I use vaccum for casting so that is good for me. Too hot, and you get MOLD WARTS!
You will know them when you see them.
Nice rig.
Don't ruin it with lead.

[jmsj]

Looks like it would be great to heat treat or caseharden gun parts in. What are the internal dimensions of the furnace?

[man.electric]

doc, I have no intension's of running lead in the Sybron as I have too much money tied up in functional lead pots to try and make a apple into an orange with this one. When I bought it I think I had intentions of using it for case coloring some parts on an old wall hanger that never came to be. The only problem is that bone meal case coloring would make the neighborhood smell like Auschwitz and my better half would not like it.

[tackstrp]

maybe a pottery person would or could use.

[JesterGrin_1]

If I was close I would use it to heat treat knife blades. :).

[btroj]

Used to use to measure ash in feed samples. Man, that was a few years ago.

Brad

[Doc Highwall]

You could use it for heat treating bullets

[docone31]

It won't run low enough to heat treat castings.
At the lowest setting, you would get a puddle.
That furnace would do well in heat treating parts. Colour case hardening.
It would work well.
That furnace is in good condition. The last one I saw was the one my wife's mother used in enameling. It barely worked though. I had to recoil it, and replace some bricks.
It would glow though.

[man.electric]

The internal measurements are 4 1/2 wide by 3 1/2 high by 9 deep. I can't remember what I paid for it and forgot that I even had it sitting there. The lab that sold it had upgraded to a digital unit and sold this one at an auction I was at. I purchased a truckload of stuff that day and this one just got shelved. I ran it up a few hundred degrees as a test run and she heated just fine.

[Skipper488]

With a properly designed rack insert it would make a great heat treat oven to condition your cast bullets.

[Wayne Smith]

I don't know if this is possible with that furnace but you might want to talk to U.P.North about heat treating some of his dies.

[scrapcan]

I agree o nthe die heat treating quest. See what temps you need and see if you can get them with this toy. There is a scan of heat treat specs in one of the threads on swaging section. I am away form my books at the moment so am no help.

You could also use it to anneal cartridge brass prior to swaging them.

[JIMinPHX]

Little muffle furnaces like that are usually used for heat treating small batches of small parts made from steel alloys. Some chem labs use them for sterilizing crucibles. You may be able to cast precious metals in it. You can flow braze carbide inserts in them too. I've used them for that more than anything else.

It's difficult to accurately heat treat in those little things that don't have view ports in them unless your temperature sensor is well calibrated. Those antique analog thermometers just can't be trusted. Most of the old school heat treat guys that I've met over the years trust the color of the glow more than the thermometer reading when checking for proper soak temperature.

If you just want to get a piece of O-1 hard enough to cut mild steel or swage some lead, those things are fine. If you want to try to meet a RC hardness spec within a 2 point spread, that can be tough in those little rigs. You can expect to try 4 or 5 times before getting inside the 2 point window.

Don't bank on that thing getting all the way up to 2500F just because the thermometer goes that high. Some of them go that high. Others max out at 1250 or 1500F. The model number makes me suspect that this one may top out at 1500.

It looks like your refractory cement is still in good shape, so that one may still be safe to use.

[Cowboy T]

How about casting silver bullets and rollin' Lone Ranger style?

http://www.patriciabriggs.com/books/silver/silverbullets.shtml

Yes, someone actually did this. Silver melting at a temperature of what, 1,700 degrees, you should have no problems when the zombies bring their Werewolf reinforcements. :D

[man.electric]

JIMinPHX, the old analog display is getting replaced with a heat treat grade Omron Temp Control PID and purpose ready thermocouple. I have the means to accurately calibrate the digital controls even if I never use them. The lab it came from took great care of it and given the marker on the door I am guessing never ran it too hot. I will have to try a test run this weekend and see what temperature I can max it out at.

[u.p. north]

Do you have a way to test to see how much it will heat up to. I did send you a private message also. P.M. me your phone number and we can talk about it.
Thanks,
Tim

[man.electric]

Tim, I am going to install a digital temperature controller on it this weekend and run a few test cycles to find the max range and calibrate the new display. I will let you know once I find the high limit.

[theperfessor]

We've got a Blue M 2000F oven at school that isn't much bigger internally than yours. We use it when we do quench hardening of steel. We've got another 600F oven right beside it that we use for tempering. My guys make threaded ASTM tensile test specimens on the CNC lathe and then we heat treat them and break them. Amazing how much tempering temperature affects strength and ductility.

I've wanted to replace the analog controls on both of them. Was going to do it with a simple PID module but after thinking about it and talking with electronics colleagues we plan to implement a system to be able to control rate of temperature change. I want to be able to drop the temperature in the Blue M at a controlled rate. There are some ferrous alloys (HSS among them) that need to be cooled from the austenitic state at a rate of a few degrees per hour when annealing. (that's one reason HSS is expensive, it's not just what's in it, it's the time and energy costs associated with making it.)

You sound like you know your stuff, and I'm not an electronics guy, but you might consider having ramp-up/ramp down control. And if you figure out how to do it please let us know, I for one would be very interested.

[man.electric]

Perfessor, there is not an easy fix to a ramp up/down control loop. Depending on the complexity of the ramp times, one would need a smart relay or PLC to handle the logic behind the control and you will always need a man there to remove the part from the furnace once the cycle is done. If the operator is not watching the oven, a chart recorder or hi/low set points that change with the ramp loop with an alarm would be needed to as a fail safe that the process was correctly performed in case of power loss or control failure. Both control scenarios are not hard to do, but once programmed they are not very user friendly to change on the fly.

Let me ponder your question for a bit and see what simple solutions I can come up with.

[theperfessor]

That's what my buds have told me - that it would require a PLC. I have made a simple dual PID controller for my casting furnace and hot plate, and it works great for holding a constant temperature, but I really need to learn more about PLCs and time based controls.

[Skipper488]

A small PLC can be purchased from http://www.automationdirect.com/adc/Shopping/Catalog/Programmable_Controllers/DirectLogic_Series_PLCs_(Micro_to_Small,_Brick_-a-_Modular)/DirectLogic_05_(Micro_Brick_PLC)/PLC_Units

and a limited version of the software is very free.

Oops forgot the cable ($14) So for just over $100 you can get a PLC to play with and even connect to various pieces of equipment down the road.

[man.electric]

I usually us Allen Bradley's Micro Logix for small PLC work, but the cost is high and the software is far from free. I had issues with past purchases from Automation Direct and stopped buying from them. They might have fixed the quality issues of their products by now, but I gave them two chances and was disappointed both times.

[Skipper488]

I have never had an out of the box failure from AutomationDirect. The good news is they are only one day delivery from me using regular UPS ground. I work for a system integrator that doesn't specialize in any particular PLC so we use what ever the customer specs out. My favorite PLC far and away is the Allen Bradley followed closely by Modicon/Schneider (ask me tomorrow and it'll be the other way around) but neither of those is cheap and the software approaches $1000 so it's not in the realm of a hobbiest. My computer has over $10,000 of software on it from most of the major PLC manufacturers. Even so unless I found a PLC I could scrounge to use at home I wouldn't use the AB as you're talking $400 for a low end one. There is another cheap website called Factorymation and I think there PLR is the basis for some of the new really lowend stuff from Schneider and AB. http://www.factorymation.com/
Any way I'm happy to offer assistance for any PLC project you happen to be planning for free as long as it's for personal use and not a money making thing.

[JIMinPHX]

My favorite PLCs are Mitsubishi, Omron, & AB in that order. The reason that AB is not at the top of the list is because those thieves have robbed me twice. They made me spend an extra $5k+ twice to buy a new programming software package. The first time was after one of their output cards failed after being in service for less than a year. I bought a new one to replace it & when I installed it, I found that the new firmware version was not compatible with the firmware in my CPU. That forced me to flash the CPU with new firmware. Then my old software that I had programmed it with would no longer communicate & I had to eat $5k for new programming software. The second time that they robbed me was when I did a defrag on my hard drive & it erased the foot-printed activation for RS-logix 5000. When I called up tech support, they told me tough luck, go buy another license. Now I tell them tough luck, I'm not using your controls on any new project unless it's specified in by the customer under contract.

Siemens is my least favorite PLC to program, even though it is one of the best in terms of hardware quality. The programming is unnecessarily verbose (worse than me). The mnemonics are in German (eg = eingang = input, ag = ausgang = output, etc). You don't get just 1 program to run the PLC, you get a family of like 10 or 20 little baby programs that all need to work together. I just don't like it. It's extra confusing for no good reason.

The Koyo PLCs that you get from Automation Direct are cheap & they are OK for simple projects, but I would go for something a little more sophisticated if you plan on using any analog I/O. Also, that "free" software from automation direct (aka PLC direct) only works on very simple PLC versions. Each time you step up one level of PLC performance, they make you buy a higher grade version of the programming software. I'm pretty sure that the free stuff doesn't cover anything analog, unless things there have changed substantially in the last year & a half. I only use them when I need to get down in the dirt on a low ball project.

[Skipper488]

We pay more than $3000 every year for the integrators package from AB. We get every piece of software that AB uses or has ever used plus phone support. But the software completely shuts down at the end of the year. I've been working with this company for 7 years, thats $21,000+ over that time.

[Skipper488]

The Schneider rep for the area was just in and reminded me that the newest Modicon stuff uses free software. Fully functional, no limitations and the hardware comes in several attractive and affordable packages.

[cumminsnut76]

Used to use to measure ash in feed samples. Man, that was a few years ago.

Brad

HA HA We have been talking about this in my Animal Nutrition Class. I can definatly see this.

[btroj]

HA HA We have been talking about this in my Animal Nutrition Class. I can definatly see this.

I do not miss my days in the ag testing lab. Pay was poor and it was not always a neat, tidy job. I did however learn that there are many ways to ruin a pair of Levis. Some of them are slow, some instant. A drop for the manifold on a kjedahl digest hoes thru cotton denim like it isn't even there. Nothing like finding a hole from acid in the fly of your shorts, luckily only in one layer........

Ah, the good old days..

Brad

[man.electric]

The Schneider rep for the area was just in and reminded me that the newest Modicon stuff uses free software. Fully functional, no limitations and the hardware comes in several attractive and affordable packages.

I also like the Schneider line and last year installed about 15 units with little trouble(except blue tooth issues that were quickly resolved). The software fees from AB are just part of the cost of doing business now.

[Duckiller]

An uncle that was a dentist had an oven like that in his lab. Among other things he used it to make Gold keys for my aunt. Her house key and car key were cast from dental gold (harder than pure as I recall)