Having a hard time trying to picture scaling the fluid bedding up for bullets.
It's interesting, but you'd be generally back to some kind of clip for the bullet.
|
   
   
|
|
Having a hard time trying to picture scaling the fluid bedding up for bullets.
It's interesting, but you'd be generally back to some kind of clip for the bullet.
a fluid bed would be nice, but seems like it would be more trouble than its worth to find a way of dipping the boolits in the bed.
Well, what I am trying to avoid is "racking" the boolits one at a time by hand.
I don't know how to keep the boolits free of any "scars". The boolits would have to be in a mesh or screen tray while in the fluid bed. Then the boolits would still get baked on the mesh and probably be cooked stuck to the mesh. So I am envisioning what a PITA that will be to free the boolits from the mesh. You'd probably have to tumble them to knock off the scars. Then recoat them, and rebake them, then tumble them again to knock off any scars, and then probably re-size them back down.
I am picturing a fish tank or aquairium with an air hose ran to it. Put some ledges inside the aquairium. Make up some mesh trashs. Fix up a plexiglass lid to it, with some weatherstripping. Dump in some powder. Preheat boolits in their trays, place on ledges, close lid, turn on air gradually to build up a cloud inside the aquairium, wait about 5 minutes, shut off air, let cloud settle, retrieve tray and stick in oven???
When you put the lid on the tank,in a VERY short time air pressure will build inside the tank and POOF powder everywhere and you will do a clean up for YEARS
No don't ask.
WE WON. WE BEAT THE MACHINE. WE HAVE CCW NOW.
Ahhhh... Poop! I hadn't thought of that. Duh! I'd be basically trying to pressurize a large rectangular glass container. That can't be good.
The videos I have seen of fishing lures show a lot of guys using air pumps meant for fish tanks, but then again their fluid beds are made from 2" or 3" PVC fittings.
Here is one video I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIWXv...e_gdata_player
Looks like a grill for around a fan. I guess they can't afford gloves in India???
I am assuming by the looks of the control panel and the
metal hooks, a charge is being applied to the grills.
maybe a lid made of an old shirt or something??? Keep the dust in but let the air out. could also be easily done with a rubber made container seems like 1/8 inch hardware cloth would make a good base for the bullets to sit on. Im only doing pistol bullets so if the base isnt covered its no big deal. Ive got a long weekend so I may try to work something out to test
Since I have raised fish for a few years the smallest tank I have ever seen available is a 2 gal tank. 6" W 8" high and 12" long.
How many # would be needed even for that small tank?
A big + is that what ever you build to place your boolits on should fit nicely into your oven.
WE WON. WE BEAT THE MACHINE. WE HAVE CCW NOW.
If you look through the plans provided by a google images search or reading, you'll note that there is a grate underneath the powder (and above the air chamber) that provides the static charge to the powder. The conveyor of items is then grounded.Originally Posted by Russel Nash
Ahhhh... Poop! I hadn't thought of that. Duh! I'd be basically trying to pressurize a large rectangular glass container. That can't be good.
The videos I have seen of fishing lures show a lot of guys using air pumps meant for fish tanks, but then again their fluid beds are made from 2" or 3" PVC fittings.
Here is one video I found:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIWXv...e_gdata_player
Looks like a grill for around a fan. I guess they can't afford gloves in India???
I am assuming by the looks of the control panel and the
metal hooks, a charge is being applied to the grills.
My assumption is that a liquid based application would be easier than trying to build something like this at a scale that could be handled for bullets.
Don't get me wrong, a 6-12 inch bed that then passes through a cooker does sound quite cool, but you're still at the point where you need to clip the bullets to a trolley conveyor. Granted, you *might* be able to get away with using some aluminum window screen with the bullets base down on the screen. Not entirely sure how you avoid cooking the bullets to the screen (ala aluminum foil).
If ya somehow rigged up a series of stems to drop hollow point bullets on, that has possibilities maybe. Might even be able to make it auto-drop bullets on to the stems before they enter the fluid bed. A fair amount of engineering involved.
I'll stick with the plan of the hindu foot rest and hollow point bullets myself.
Building a bigger oven ? On the todo list. Have most things ironed out, just need figure out a cheap source of sheet metal. The flat air duct stuff would prolly work just fine. Really want the oven to be 24x24x24 .... or preferrably 24x24x36. Individual hobby metal sheets of around that size run $20-$35 apiece and ya need 6... the build without the sheet metal is looking to be around $75 (rock wool insulation eating up most of that).
Upping the jig size and increasing spacing on centers from 1" to 1.25" or 1.5" inch is also on the list to help stop any shadowing problems.
If you were closer to St. Louis, I would say to stop by Shapiro Steel:
http://www.shapirosupply.com/
It's basically a scrap yard, that also carries new stuff. They have all sorts of perforated metal.
I got a piece of sheet metal from there with these holes just small enough to let my homemade birdshot through.
Last edited by Russel Nash; 04-30-2013 at 12:06 AM.
If you ran an inlet hose in one side and then an outlet hose on the other side, with some sort of pump sitting outside the box to recirculate the air, then you're technically not pressurizing the box. Who knows? A fish tank pump might be enough. With a charge applied to the boolits, the boolits don't necessarily have to be down in the bubbling cloud of powder. They only need to be close enough for the charge to pull up the pigmented particles and adhere to the boolits.
I made a fluid bed with an air pump for a fish tank and some PVC pipe fittings. I found the plans where people were coating fishing lures.
The fluid bed worked but it took a lot of time to coat each bullet.
I used paper for the air to travel through and fluff the powder paint the paper worked best. There is You Tube movie of someone trying several different types of material for the air to travel through.
The powder coating gun doing a group of bullets at one time worked better for me.
I have the fluid bed on a shelf somewhere, will try to find.
I did a lot of googling today, and one of the things I tripped across was a thread where a British guy was talking about making his own oven. It sounded like he made it out of plywood and using a foil faced insulation board on the inside. If I recall correctly, it was on the practical machinist's forum.If you look through the plans provided by a google images search or reading, you'll note that there is a grate underneath the powder (and above the air chamber) that provides the static charge to the powder. The conveyor of items is then grounded.
My assumption is that a liquid based application would be easier than trying to build something like this at a scale that could be handled for bullets.
Don't get me wrong, a 6-12 inch bed that then passes through a cooker does sound quite cool, but you're still at the point where you need to clip the bullets to a trolley conveyor. Granted, you *might* be able to get away with using some aluminum window screen with the bullets base down on the screen. Not entirely sure how you avoid cooking the bullets to the screen (ala aluminum foil).
If ya somehow rigged up a series of stems to drop hollow point bullets on, that has possibilities maybe. Might even be able to make it auto-drop bullets on to the stems before they enter the fluid bed. A fair amount of engineering involved.
I'll stick with the plan of the hindu foot rest and hollow point bullets myself.
Building a bigger oven ? On the todo list. Have most things ironed out, just need figure out a cheap source of sheet metal. The flat air duct stuff would prolly work just fine. Really want the oven to be 24x24x24 .... or preferrably 24x24x36. Individual hobby metal sheets of around that size run $20-$35 apiece and ya need 6
Upping the jig size and increasing spacing on centers from 1" to 1.25" or 1.5" inch is also on the list to help stop any shadowing problems.
If you fellas are looking for a possibly easier and cleaner way to individually dip each boolit into a fluid bed, you can look into gem or bead grabber tools from a jewelry making outfit. I used (past tense) an el cheapo yellow plastic one for dip lubing in 45-45-10 for years.
Yeah, I had already seen several images/schematics/plans/diagrams, and it was probably just my selective brain filters, but I saw a lot that involved a cyclone. So my reaction was, "Uggh...who has a room for a cyclone?"If you look through the plans provided by a google images search or reading, you'll note that there is a grate underneath the powder (and above the air chamber) that provides the static charge to the powder. The conveyor of items is then grounded.
My assumption is that a liquid based application would be easier than trying to build something like this at a scale that could be handled for bullets.
Don't get me wrong, a 6-12 inch bed that then passes through a cooker does sound quite cool, but you're still at the point where you need to clip the bullets to a trolley conveyor. Granted, you *might* be able to get away with using some aluminum window screen with the bullets base down on the screen. Not entirely sure how you avoid cooking the bullets to the screen (ala aluminum foil).
If ya somehow rigged up a series of stems to drop hollow point bullets on, that has possibilities maybe. Might even be able to make it auto-drop bullets on to the stems before they enter the fluid bed. A fair amount of engineering involved.
I'll stick with the plan of the hindu foot rest and hollow point bullets myself.
Building a bigger oven ? On the todo list. Have most things ironed out, just need figure out a cheap source of sheet metal. The flat air duct stuff would prolly work just fine. Really want the oven to be 24x24x24 .... or preferrably 24x24x36. Individual hobby metal sheets of around that size run $20-$35 apiece and ya need 6
Upping the jig size and increasing spacing on centers from 1" to 1.25" or 1.5" inch is also on the list to help stop any shadowing problems.
So with your suggestion, I went back to do some more image googling. I found this pic:
which again, I am assuming is overseas somewhere with the lack of gloves. You can barely make it out, but it looks like a plywood box.
Russel - looks more like ES gun coating, as there is a stream of powder flowing out of the object. I suspect he is coating the inside. All the data I can find says it is hard to keep the coating thickness even and below .005" using the fluid method. Fishing lure people don't care much about thickness but I do. You don't have to provide much pressure, just a sealed box, a membrane with air circulation inside. The HF gun actually works on the same principal, inside the powder tank, to carry the powder out of the gun. One could cast with a .005-.010 dia wire in the nose, wrap that wire around a support to PC then snip it off before loading. Beats soldering a wire on the nose.
OK, some detail observations from my experiments. Base coating of FB is more accurate, have to have that edge coated. Possibly only the bevel part of BB needs to be coated to prevent gas cutting. Base peening isn't a problem as I'm using flake powder. If partially covering the nose, make sure to coat the ogive to less than bore dia. I found that my 30-30s had the PC ridge right at the rifling - not good. I chambered some dummy 40s and found a ridge where the throat pushed lead back into the chamber but the PC didn't flake or cut off. Uncoated did shave a lead ring(tiny but bare lead). They were sized 0.401 & unsized, 0.404-0.405. Another problem solved.
Last edited by popper; 04-30-2013 at 05:56 PM.
Whatever!
I'll keep putzing with my wire frame idea.
It sounds like with fluid bed or fluidized bed techniques there are two ways, maybe three. electrostatic just like we all have come to know powdercoating. then there is preheating the part, which is what the fisherman do to make lures. they heat up their crappie jigs with a heat gun or a torch first, then dip it into the cloud of powder.
the third method is "flow-cad" or "flo cad" where the stuff passes through the cloud and is immediately put on a conveyor through an oven to bake it on.
There's a possibility that it might be cheaper to go that route. Plywood aint cheap these days eitherI did a lot of googling today, and one of the things I tripped across was a thread where a British guy was talking about making his own oven. It sounded like he made it out of plywood and using a foil faced insulation board on the inside. If I recall correctly, it was on the practical machinist's forum.. A 4x4 1/2 inch sheet can easily run $13-$20. If ya go with 2'x2', the cost drops significantly though ($5-$7).
I'll have to look at the foil insulation board stuff, but I'm weary of wood.... while wood itself prolly does fine up to 500F, dunno so much about the glue therein for plywood or cheap ODF.
Plenum's for ductwork stuff are around $60 and come with 4 sides. No insulation grant you.
Ductwork sheet metal can be had for $9 a panel in the sizes I'm looking at, not too bad.
This goes on to beg the question that I forgot about -- if using the rock wool insulation, need an *outside* as well. Would plywood be fine for that ?
Then again, what's the worst that could happen if I attempt a plywood + foil insulation... it smolders and i put it out ?
Fine, I'll look at a 2'x2'x2' build :P
We've got a couple foundry shops here in Omaha ... and a few metal scrap yard places. I'll have to go dig around.
And shapiro's prices aren't that bad indeed.
Fluid bed made from 2" PVC pipe and 2" PVC pipe coupling.
Paper in the middle of the 2" coupling.
Coating in top chamber with paper as bottom of chamber.
Air in bottom chamber from an aquarium pump.
Made trying to use fishing lure coating to coat bullets.
Heated bullets with heat gun, dipped in fluid bed and heated again to cure coating on bullets.
How are you holding the bullets to "dip" them in the fluid bed?
Posting Permissions
| BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
| BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
| BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
| C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
| HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
| PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
| LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
| GC | Gas Check |
Reply With Quote