Molten metal stirring motor

[grumpy one]

I use cooling curves as a way to establish actual composition of alloys. Weaver published a chart of liquidus temperature, and another of BHN, on axes of antimony content and tin content. When you know your liquidus temperature for an alloy you can look it up on the chart, then look up hardness on the other chart. If they both point to the same alloy composition you can be pretty confident about it. My process is to do that for each of my base, stock alloys and use a spreadsheet to calculate what constituents and proportions to use to produce the specific alloy I want. Then I do cooling and hardness tests on the specific alloy as well. When I first started doing that I got some inconsistent results, which always turned out to be due to me having omitted to test one of my stock alloys, due to being overconfident that it really was what it was supposed to be. Having now refined my understanding of what is really in my stock alloys, I no longer seem to get any surprises from the cooling curves on the specific alloys I mix up. Incidentally one of the quickest ways to test whether your stock alloys are what they should be, is to use them to mix up a eutectic and do a cooling curve on that.

[Nueces]

Incidentally one of the quickest ways to test whether your stock alloys are what they should be, is to use them to mix up a eutectic and do a cooling curve on that.

Hey, that's cool, good idea. I just picked up some linotype pigs from a print shop, be a good idea to test it as you suggest, no mixing required for this stuff.

Mark

[Lee]

Just a thought here, and not meant to stir things up()...
The electronics type guys have been using wave soldering pots and setups for years. Of course with a 63/37 tin/lead alloy, but they use stirrers to produce a "hump" wave motion to wash the underside of a stuffed circuit board. I don't recall hearing any negative issues with that type of set-up...
Just my $0.02..............................Lee

[grumpy one]

Thanks Lee, you just made my day. Being deeply embedded in Australian colloquial expressions I was having difficulty for a while figuring out why somebody would bother to solder a circuit board if it was already stuffed.

From here on the day will be all downhill.