Increasing production rate

[JSimpson65]

Hello All,

Since I finally made the jump from a single stage press to a progressive, I decided it was time to start cranking out some boolits to feed it. Since today was rainy out all day, decided it was a good day to build the boolit stash up a bit. Cast about 500 45's, 300 38's and 300 40's this morning. I know this probably isn't much by some of you guy's standards, but since I usually only cast 100 or so at a time it was a big jump in production rate for me. The casting went pretty quick using the 6cavity molds, and definately made me appreciate upgrading from the 10lb pot to the 20lb pot I have now.

Using the Lee 6-cavity molds, I would quickly get to the point where I spent about as much time waiting for the mold to cool as I spent actually casting. Any recommendations on cooling the mould between casts? I kept the pot at about 725 to 750 degrees. Seems like I've heard of folks resting the mold on a damp rag to cool, but I haven't tried it yet.

Any other suggestions from those with more experience that I?

Thanks,
Joe

[Crash_Corrigan]

Check out the Bruce B speedcasting thread. You can find it in the stickies.

Basically it uses a shallow pan or dish of 1 1/2" depth with water in it. Put a sponge in the water and a folded towel or rag on top of it. You want to keep the rag very wet.

Once your mold is too hot just wait until the sprue hardens a bit and then invert the mold and place the sprue plate onto the rag and let it sizzle for a few seconds. This will cause it and the mold to cool down a mite. Remove the boolits and load it again with alloy.

With the 6 bangers I usually only cool down the sprue plate every third cast and does the job.

[HeavyMetal]

You can also think about casting with two 6 cavity molds.

You would have doubled your production of each caliber if you'd had a second mold in the same design.

To keep up with a dual mold set up I mounted an old Lee 10Lb'er above my Lyman Mold Master. The top pot is a pre heat / resavior which allows me to fell the bottom pot with ready to go alloy.

The top one gets set wide open to get the ingots melted real quick.

I'm sure you'll hear other idea's put forward on this thread.

The idea, of course, is to come up with something that works for you and you can be comfortable with.

[blikseme300]

Me, I don't like the idea of any water near me when I am casting. I dislike the tinsel fairy.

I use a combination of things:

2 x Lee six bangers
1 x small fan for cooling the mold
1 x 70lb melting pot with PID (see http://bliksemseplek.com/boolits.html )

Yup, me crazy, but I now only need to cast rarely.:redneck:

Bliksem

[RodneyUSAF]

Sponge trick works just fine, That water will not be on the mold for long. I give the sprues a 2 mississippi count on sponge and it does the trick.

[JeffinNZ]

I just tell her to quit wasting time and cast faster. A man needs his bullets................

[hoosierlogger]

I just set my mold on the cold concrete floor for a few seconds. I try not to go too fast, but it happens sometimes.

[Rick N Bama]

I just tell her to quit wasting time and cast faster. A man needs his bullets................

Jeff is that when the fight started:)?

Rick

[GabbyM]

I use an aluminum plate as a heat sink to set the mould on. plus a 6" fan blowing across the area where I dump bullets.

Fan will cool a mould faster than you can shuffle two moulds running in tandem.

[DLCTEX]

I just tell her to quit wasting time and cast faster. A man needs his bullets................

I don't know if Jeff is lying or bragging?

[lwknight]

When I'm casting 240 grain .430s in the 6 banger the molds do get too hot but, its allt he Lee 20 pound pot can do to keep up. Even using small ingots it slows me down enough to allow the molds to cool ambiently. I would have to preheat the ingots or use a premelter to get to wher I had to cool the molds with a wet sponge.
Once the molds are good and hot I will cast as long as the spout don't freeze up ( usually when the pot drops below 615 degrees) and the high limit is set at 700.

I think that the lowest useable cast temp makes faster production in the long run.

[Bullshop]

I do about the same as GabbyM with a slight twist. I use the aluminum plate for a heat sink but I use two small fans. One fan is set on each side of the plate with one pushing air to the mold and one pulling air from the mold. Even with large volume multi cavity blocks cycle time is about 7 seconds.
I also keep a large clock with sweeping second hand in front of me at eye level so I can accurately time each cycle. This helps keep boolit weight more consistent and also keeps hardness more consistent if quenching from the mold.
BIC/BS

[fredj338]

Like HM, I use two molds for non stop casting & higher production rates. I don't like the idea of coolng my mold w/ water, afraid of warping, especially w/ the thin alum block on the Lee molds. A small fan, setup near the pot, allows you to air cool the mold a bit after each knock out. The MagmaCaster has a fan built in to cool the molds on opening & allows a pretty high production rate of 600+/- bullets per hour w/ a 2cav mold.

[mpmarty]

I too use a pan of water with a folded towel in it. After I'm up to temp I usually rest the mold on the folded wet towel for a few seconds between each third or fourth cast. I don't turn the mold upside down and rest the sprue plate on the wet towel. I usually cut the sprue before doing this.

[JeffinNZ]

I don't know if Jeff is lying or bragging?

Hardly likely to do my own casting. A man could get sick. ;););)

[GabbyM]

Glad to see Bullshop and I are on the same page. Makes me think I may be doing something right. [smilie=s:

I have two magma 40 pound pots. One on a Master caster one arm bandit machine the other on a hand cast base mount. When I run the squirrel cage fan on the hand cast pot running 6 cavity Lee moulds I need to turn the fan off intermittently or the aluminum moulds will become to cool. Even with 44 caliber bullets. When in a big hurry I can speed up the process by running both pots. Using a feeder pot also keeps the alloy temp stable in my casting pot. Only need to consider the feeder pot with large bullets or my ten cavity 9mm mould. With smaller bullets a 40 pound pot will run for 45 minutes by just dumping the sprue back in. Then I'm ready for a break while new lead melts.

I've tried the Bruce B wet towel cooling method but here my water is hard so it leaves calcium deposits on my moulds. Plus mould temp is inconsistent yielding variable bullet weight and diameter. Fan method requires no extra arm motion. You just pause and rest for a four count or so. Maintaining a steady smooth pace over a long period of time yields consistent bullets with high volume over a period of hours as opposed to what you can punch out in fifteen minutes then by theory multiply that times X hours to project a production rate. I've worked in production shop manufacturing for thirty years up to when that job ceased to exist in the USA. Am familiar with the difference in timing a man working for ten minutes then multiplying yield times six to see a piece per hour rate as opposed to timing production over a four hour period. Hence my fan method where you poor lead then count to four or two seconds depending upon your bullet then dump and repeat. Not faster than the Bruce B method but your chances of needing carpo tunnel surgery are much reduced. Also set up your work area to where your shoulders do not rotate much when your pants are planted in a chair as this twist your spine and grinds the cartilage out of it. When standing move your feet to turn not just your shoulders as your hips are stationary as that twist your spine which grinds the cartilage between your vertebrae. This becomes more important as you increase the load in your arms thus increasing down force on your spine. I used to move twenty thousand pounds of steel per day for years. I learned these simple helpful hints after I ran out of cartilage. Simply put you don't want to rotate our spine when you have heavy weight pulling down upon your shoulders. Not that a casting mould is heavy but hopefully you all get the idea. Work smarter not harder.

[JSimpson65]

Thanks for all the ideas.

Next time I will probably try the wet towel method. Seems like I recall seeing some small, 6" or 8" desktop type fans at Walmart awhile ago, so may pick one of those up to try. I may also try the aluminum heat sink method if I can get my hands on a big chunk of aluminum plate. I can see that my little 4' casting bench is going to get pretty crowded. Already have the Lee 20lb pot, small hot-plate to preheat moulds, towel to drop bullets onto, and a small cake pan I drop sprues into. Maybe I'll use a stool off to the side to hold the damp towel.

thanks again for the ideas

[BruceB]

Hard water is a problem here, too. All I do to prevent the deposits is use bottled water from the store, which is very inexpensive in the amounts I use.

I must disagree on the "inconsistent mould temperature" comment. My mould has NO TIME to change its temperature very much when it's being filled every twelve or fifteen seconds, and the pot is kept as full as possible to cut melting time for fresh alloy. An ingot is added just as soon as there's enough room in the pot, and the temp of the melt only drops maybe 30 degrees with pre-heated ingots. Therefore, there's little variation in either the mould temp or the melt temperature.

The mould blocks themselves usually are not cooled, and only the sprue plate touches the wet pad. Some seem to be missing a vital point....by cooling the sprue, smearing of lead on the plate and tops of the blocks is eliminated. Not "reduced", eliminated!

[JSimpson65]

Question regarding putting the sprue plate down on the wet towel.

Does this give a problem cutting the sprues when they are cooled like that? Reason I ask is that I broke the sprue plate handle on a Lee 6cav. mould awhile back, due to my own hardheadedness, because the mould wasn't preheated enough. As soon as I filled the mould, the sprues all hardened up solid pretty quick, and when I tried to force the handle to cut, the handle snapped in half. Maybe that's just a Lee problem? Or maybe just my problem?

That reminds me that I still need to call Lee to see about getting the handle replaced. Since I have 3 of their 6cavity moulds, I've been switching the handles around to make do.

Thanks,
Joe

[prs]

I use two Lee 6 cavity molds in rotation. I run two 20# Lee pots with 1 to 2" of clay oil dry granules floating on the melt. I rest the molds on a piece of aluminum angle as a heat sink when they get too hot and on plywood if I want them to gain heat. As one pot empties I drop in new muffins and go to the other pot. Hot spru waste dumps directly upon the floating clay granules of th eactive pot. The clay granules support the spru strip until it melts and sinks in, thus not cooling the pot's mix and no splash/splatter. Its a rythm that takes a short time to achieve, but you can really drop a whole lotta pills rite quick! Its not that I am in any bit rush, my back only tolerates casting for long and I want to make the best of it.

prs

[BLTsandwedge]

I don't have much to add 'cept running two 20 lb bottom-pour pots and two moulds at the same time to get efficiency from the few hours I have to cast.

A few thoughts though. Of the two pots, the passive pot will sit at about 600f. I'll bring the active pot up to about 750f, flux and then use sprues to bring down the temperature to 700f. This mandates a thermometer- and to have the thermometer in the active pot all the time. As I'm running, the active pots temp will rise- it's wanting to get to 750- but I'll drop sprues in as needed to keep the pot at 700. Adding the sprues back in keeps the pot fuller for a longer period of time (not to mention keeping pouring pressure strong for a longer period). The passive pot comes in handy after I use about 3/4 of the active pots content. The few minutes it takes for the 600f melt to reach 700-750 is time enough to flux and re-charge a beverage or whatnot.

There's lots of folks who'll suggest not returning sprues to the pot in order to keep temperature and content consistency. I've found no difference between lots cast using the sprue-added method v. a straight use of pot content. However, I shoot revolvers and do not weigh each bullet. The latter method- adding nothing to the pot while casting- may well be necessary for those who shoot rifle- and who look for precision. I defer to the rifle shooters for their experiences.

[686]

i run 2-3 6 cav molds at a time. pour from magma 90 lb. pot. i also use 2 6" fans to help cool the molds. when i use only 2 molds i feel like i am waiting a long time to pour the next mold. have fun

[Beekeeper]

Jeff,
A Man could get very sick if he kept insisting on SHMBO doing all the casting.
There other ways of getting lead poisoning you know.
Have a care there in Gods Country

Jim

[Crash_Corrigan]

I keep a passive pot on top of a 2 x 4 shelf above the casting Lee 4-20. The top one is a veteran 4-20 with a required vice grip on top of the op rod to keep the dripping under control. I have a 30" hunk of channel steel to direct the flow from the top pot's spout into the casting pot.

I keep ingots heating on the edge of the top pot and keep the dial turned to max. Every once in a while I will dump the sprues from the sprue box on the casting bench into the top pot. The ideal situation is to keep the casting pot at least 1/2 full to 3/4 full at all times. If it is too full then the pressure is too much and I waste a lot of alloy when the alloy flows over the edges of the mold.

I like a generous sprue puddle and then using Bruce B's speedcasting method I cool down every third cylcle using the wet towel over a sponge in a plate of water dealie. This keeps those 6 bangers from getting too hot. I used Mihec's .44 6 banger that that puppy got to be smoking hot. I had to use the wet towel almost every other cast otherwise the boolits would stick in the cavities.

If I get into a good rythym I can really pile up those boolits into the 5 gallon buckets pretty quick. I make sure that I have everything I need within arm's reach and I do not waste any motions at all whilst casting. I do have a 4 cavity Lyman mold that make a goergeous 174 gr boolit for my 357 but it is so heavy that I do not like to use it.

I got into the holy black recently and my mold by BACO puts out a 695 gr Creedmoore style boolit at .512. Even using a single cavity mold I was averaging over 100 boolits an hour without even trying hard. All the "Experts" advised that you cannot use a bottom pour pot for such large boolits. Horse Puckey! If the alloy is clean and fluxed properly and the temp of the alloy and the mold is hot enuf you can get excellent boolits from a Lee 4-20 even if they are very large.

I weighed mine and almost all of them were within .4 grain of 495 grains. If I kept the flow of alloy down the center of the sprue hole I got a good boolit. If I missed and let the alloy flow around the hole then I got voids and light boolits. It has got to go directly into the hole in the sprue plate in the center. No if and or buts.

I used Rotometals 40-1 alloy and I had good fill out and good boolits. They shot pretty good too.