Yup. That's what it was designed for, and what I melted with it.
There is a little Al scrap around the shop. Worst case, you can melt beverage cans, but the smoke from the paint & coatings burning off is pretty nasty.

If you give me a heads up when you want to try firing it up, I'll see if I can come in and help out.

Finished the first take at the logo positive a second is about half way done. It has better resolution and I'm cutting it with both an. X and a Y pass so it should be cleaner. On the CNC router, if it's still clamped I'm still working on it.

Pete

Thanks, Darus. I can't wait to melt some metal.

Otto, that's wicked cool, I'm excited to check out what that looks like.

That's the first CNC mill I've ever seen in person, it's very impressive, top notch.

Riley

The aluminum that otto graciously provided is in a bag by the disassembled BMX bike in the parts area. I've got Gingery's furnace book now which explains how to mix up some casting sand. I can try to cobble together a flask. How big are the medallions?

Kory

I have had some challeges getting the logo right. The most recent of which was kicking the power strip when it was 3/4 done carving one. The good news is the latest one is almost done. Bad news is it's kind of small / shallow. We can decide how to proceed tomorrow. I've been able to get it to carve a fair amount faster as a side effect of the various challenges, so that's been cool.

Pete

Pete

Oh, if you need some inspiration, this is a guy on one of my CNC forums and the parts he makes. I'll try and find links about his forge setup, it's pretty intense he melts down engine blocks and the like. I think he burns waste oil as fuel.
http://www.castcnc.com/gallery.html

I'll be at the Hack Factory this saturday for the Cut, Turn, & Burn class.
If anyone is interested, I could come early, or stay late to fire up the aluminum foundry.

Darus, I finally found your earlier post on here where you linked to your blogged adventures. I'm pretty sure I had come across your post on that about 1.5 years ago, when I first looked at metal casting.

It looks like it worked out great and your pictures are really decent too.

I'm hoping to show up early that day, (tomorrow), but sadly, it depends on spousal approval.

If you're there, I'll be really glad to finally meet with and talk to you.

Riley

Once last thing, if anyone was interested in milling something fun out of pink foam, we could try some lost foam casting. mega fun, and no mold making.

I think that would be great, put some burn back into the event unfortunately, I think I'm going to be too busy / needing to get home Saturday to be more than a casual observer. I have a suggestion though. We need a topic and organizer(s) presenter(s) for the next 2nd Saturday HF event, why not do a test run either this weekend or in the next week and then pull together an event for Saturday November 12th ( I think the preference is for 2nd as opposed to 3rd Saturdays going forward ) There are 3-4 pretty interested and motivated members around the casting topic, why not make it an event.

I think I'll be creating additional scrap 6061 bits in the near future too if that helps.

Pete

Love to make something / anything. I think there needs to be a maker avatar / logo a la Tux.
If you've got a small 3D model or grayscale image we can cut it.

Pete