I helped break a 142-year old bell, and that's okay.

It's good to have the real Tom Scott back. We've been surviving on substitutes for a while now, but there's nothing like the real thing.

In Tom's first video back on YouTube, he takes us to see four bells cast in Loughborough, England at Taylor's Bellfoundry. You can check out their behind the scenes video of the visit below and can visit their site here.

Tom sees them make the forms - out of sand, resin, horse manure, graphite, straw, and a whole lot of experience. It's an impressive process which results in four absolutely gorgeous bells cast in bronze.

Melting Metals in the Microwave | The Ultimate Guide

This video needs a massive - Don't Try This at Home - disclaimer. 

That's in spite of the fact that the entire video is telling you how you can exactly do that - melt metal at home. 

The procedure is interesting...

• use insulating ceramic wool to shape an insulating chamber 
• wrap the insulating chamber in kapton tape
• polish the surfaces of the ceramic wool
• 'paint' the surfaces with kiln wash
• make a crucible from silicon carbide
• ???
• profit!

I've posted videos showing processes similar to this before, but today's video includes way more detail on the 'how-to' part of the process.

Making and Casting (Principles of Metallurgy)

This is a very information dense video explaining...

• where iron ore comes from and what it contains
• how blast furnaces purify iron from ore
• forming the iron from the furnace into steel
• arc furnaces melting and purifying already formed steel
• further steel refining
• casting of the steel into shape via...
• sand casting
• continuous casting
• ingot casting

This would be a great summary of the steel processing processes in class.

There's not much exciting to watch. I'm keeping the tone of my writing this week in line with the tone of the video so you know what to expect.

Thank you for reading.

Making aluminum pots

Making aluminum pots
by u/DukeOfBagels in Damnthatsinteresting

There are a million things I could probably say about safety regulations, but let's just focus on the remarkable malleability of aluminum and enjoy the processing.

Only A Few Families Know The Secret To Making This Perfect Mirror | Still Standing

Every time I watch any of the Business Insider videos (and I know I've been posting a lot of them of late - blame the YouTube algorithm for recommending them and BI for making them fascinating), I'm tempted to buy one of the item. It's not that I need an aranmula kannadi in any way. It's just that I find the process fascinating and want to reward the craftspeople who still make things by hand.

There's not a ton of material science here, but it does show a far less industrial version of casting an alloy. 

Interestingly they don't seem to mix the alloy components (mainly tin and copper but a trade secret as to the proportions and actual ingredients) other than in turning the molten metal upside down into the mold. I would be very curious to see if the mirror had a homogeneous composition throughout. 

It's also fascinating to me to think of this process being developed bit by bit over centuries. Small steps like the cooling of the mold with mud, the covering of the mold in carbon to fill in microscopic pores, and onward must have been done at some point by trial and error and kept in the process when they worked - assumedly discarded from the process when they didn't work - and I wonder how much of the process is like cooking a turkey.

Why Japanese Iron Kettles Are So Expensive | So Expensive | Business Insider

Now that's just gorgeous.

I don't drink tea, so I have absolutely no need for one of these kettles...

...but I kinda want one.

They're so simple and so pretty.

The craft that goes into creating them is spectacular to watch, too.

Casting Metal: the Basics

Casting The Future seems to be a British, casting education outreach program from a bunch of trade groups. The group includes Cast Metals Federation, Institute of Cast Metals Engineers, and ten companies contributing to the efforts.

Their main outreach seems to be the Casting The Future foundry kit which is demonstrated in the video above.

At Princeton we do some simple surface casting, but taking things to this next level would be brilliant. I'm going to look into seeing if we can order one of these kits and get it shipped across the pond to us.

They have also put together the following video explaining why casting is important to the UK manufacturing economy.

Casting vs Forging

Recently I was looking for some videos to compare the virtues of cast versus forged metal parts. Here are the ones I ended up using in class.

That video says it's 9:46, but it's really more like 4:50. The video segment plays twice in the upload for some reason. In this one Richard Hammons shows the virtues of cast versus forged parts, casts a hammer, breaks a cast sword, forges (or lets another guy forge for him) a sword, and shows how much tougher the forged sword is.

There are three more videos after the jump...

Solid Gold Lego Han Solo vs Darth Vader - untold Star Wars story

I'm not a Star Wars guy. I am, however, a Lego and molten metal kinda guy. I have a couple of Lego casts in tin via the Lego ice cube trays, but tin is a lot different from gold.

Gold is something to brag about and to throw down in a comparison.

Gold is something else.

If anybody ever wants to thank their favorite material science teacher for all the work he (or she, but definitely he this time) does on his or her favorite material science video blog, a gold Lego figure would be a fine choice.

Might I recommend a gold Benny instead, though?

Molten Aluminum vs 'Spitballs' - SO COOL!! (water balz)

I'm starting to recognize that the danger in molten metal coming into contact with water is when there's a small amount of water.

That small amount of water can gain enough energy to boil which spits the molten metal into the air.

Dump the same molten metal into enough water that the water can't all boil, however, and some cool stuff can happen.

'Smart implants' dissolve after healing - Science Nation

I don't get what's so impressive. I implant ice cream directly into my body with some frequency, and my body takes care of that all the time.

Too much ice cream, actually...

I'm hoping that they take any magnesium implants out of the bodies before they get cremated... sheesh.

That would be pretty cool, though, if medical implants could be absorbed into the body after the structural support is necessary.

The power of the mini arc furnace

There is a level of do-it-yourself project that is within my grasp.

Tighten up the hardware on the kitchen cabinets? Sure

Cut down the bushes out front? Got it

Even making the King of Random's mini metal foundry? Probably

But I'm the first to admit that I very quickly reach projects that are our of my depths, like making and then using the King of Random's mini arc furnace.

This one scares the mess out of me, and I'm going to strongly recommend that you only step into these depths if you know what you're doing.

But if you do know what you're doing, the one looks pretty awesome, using a homemade arc reactor to power an arc furnace, producing molten aluminum or copper for casting.

Be careful out there, folks...

How to make the mini metal foundry

There's pretty much nothing better than melting metal in the backyard (or maybe on the patio, wouldn't want to set the dry grass on fire out there, folks). And aluminum isn't a bad choice since it has a relatively low melting point for a metal.

Plus, lots of us have ready supplies of aluminum just sitting around in the recycling bin (because we wouldn't ever throw an aluminum can away, would we?)

In this trilogy of videos, the King of Random shows us how to make a backyard foundry, melt and purify aluminum, and then cast something via lost foamboard casting.

Looks like a blast.

The Difference Between Casting and Forging

That's a simple enough title for a webpage - the difference between casting and forging - but it's a terrifically important topic, so I greatly appreciate that ATC group (which provides both cast and forged parts, so would seem to be willing to provide neutral and positive spins on both processes) has put together a great summary on the two topics.

I'll give just a taste of the simplicity by showing their casting information...

We use castings for a wide range of wearparts and components that are too large, complicated, intricate or otherwise unsuitable for the forging process. We can forge parts up to 50kgs but the sheer energy required to forge larger items make casting a much more viable alternative.

We currently cast mining and earthmoving components to 580 kg. We can cast up to 3000 kg if required. Manganese work hardening screens are one of our specialities. We have found that by carefully choosing alloys and applying proven methods of heat treatment, we can produce castings of high quality, strength and wearability. The casting process better lends itself to making parts where internal cavities are required.
The advantages of casting include:

• No real upper size limit in casting weight
• Large range of alloy choices
• As forgings remain solid, custom alloys are far more difficult to get into production whereas with casting, alloys including Chrome, Nickel and Moly can be added at the molten stage.
• Tooling is often less expensive than forge dies
• Smaller production “runs” required
• Complicated/complex parts are no problem

For general GET as well as large and complex components - casting is a fantastic method of manufacture.

You'll have to visit the webpage to see why you should forge parts.

Shape It! Sand 5lb

We don't all have access to a local beach on which to do our metal casting. If you do have access to a beach, go for it, have a blast, just don't send us photos. Nobody else wants to see your beach photos while we're sitting at home in a landlocked state. Just quit it, Amanda.

If, however, you're nowhere near a beach, you're going to need to get yourself some nearer sand for metal casting. In particular, I like the Shape It! Sand (available under a few different brand names). Shape It! stays nice and moist thanks to some polymer additives that stay permanently moist, letting the sand pack together well into whatever little butter tub (or similar container - maybe something metal just in case the molten tin - because that's what I use in class) you're going to be pouring your metal.

And the best price around for Shape It! Sand is at Fat Brain Toys, $24.99 (link and price updated 7/5/18) for five pounds of the stuff in just about any color you could imagine (as long as you don't imagine orange.)

Casting in the forge at UC

First, a mention of thanks to Abby Friend, Princeton High School graduate in the class of 2011, and a current student at the University of Cincinnati in their DAAP (Design, Art, Architecture, Planning) school. An additional mention of thanks to Farron Allen, professor in the DAAP school who allowed me to hang out in 'his' forge for an evening class.

The students had previously made their investments out of ludo, plaster, and silica sand, burying wax sculptures and - in some cases - tiny, plastic doll limbs in their investments and ensuring that their hidden treasures had enough sprues attached for the bronze to find their way to every inch of the creations-to-be. I don't have any photos of that investment process, though you can see the final products in the large, white molds into which the bronze you see below is being poured.

Abby explained that much of the investment is reused - mixed with new plaster and sand to be used for the next set of investments.

On to the casting...

Those are the investments to the right. They just came out of the really large kiln. The bricks were on top of the holes to keep any dust out of there. The green flames to the back were coming out of the methane-fired kiln in which a whole bunch of bronze was melting in a ceramic crucible.

Aluminum Thermal Explosion

And that, my friends, is why you always need to keep your mold totally, absolutely, perfectly dry when you're pouring molten metal. Steam explosions suck.

This is not something to laugh about...unless you're Russian, I guess.

The world's largest gold coin

That's a heck of an expensive advertisement...go Canada!

Of course, we all know that "the Royal Canadian Mint sees a challenge and meets the challenge...the Royal Canadian Mint sees the standard and surpasses the standard...the Royal Canadian Mint raises the bar on excellence and is the artistic mastermind behind the world's most magnificant gold bullion coins."

I'm just trying to get a handle on the size of the coin, though. A hundred kilos is like, what, eight pounds in imperial units?

Casting a Fire Ant Colony With Molten Aluminum

Wow, chatty fellow, eh?

There may not be any words in the above video, but there is a gorgeous technique for casting a model of a fire ant colony. Yeah, it's just heat metal, dump metal, let cool, dig, but it's amazing to see the finished product with all the chambers interlaced throughout the colony.

The next video is longer and shows a bit more background of a different artist who is working in a similar medium, that of melting aluminum cans to cast sculptures of ant colonies. I particularly like the images of the blazing fire at 2:55. I also like the music (by Cake, a fun band, lemme recommend), but I will tell you that the music has a seriously Not Safe For Work (NSFW) word in the lyrics. The product in the end is far more delicate in this video, but that might not be something that the artist knows going in.


There's also a video from CBS's Sunday Morning program a while back interviewing an artist who also casts anthills out of aluminum.



Oh, and I don't see any dead ants in the sculptures, but they have to be there (or totally carbonized) right?

Hexagonal Pewter Stool

Why's it gotta be hexagonal? You never see anybody casting a nonagonal stool anymore. Why did we lose the art of nonagonal casting? Heck, I'd settle for dodecagonal casting for a change. Sheesh...

I've done sand casting once at Ohio State University in ASM's year-two camp and a few times using moon sand as a medium in the classroom, but I would've never thought of heading out to the beach to make my mold and cast directly into the playa. There are probably two main reasons for this: one, the closest big body of water to my house is the Ohio River, not exactly know for its fine, sandy beaches; and two, I'm not an artist.

This time-lapse video of sand casting is pretty impressive, though, with the artist (assumedly Max Lamb) maxing a stool that I'd be happy to have in my home.