In today's video,
we're taking a classic build, the mini metal foundry,
and we're scaling it way down to a desktop version,
the micro metal foundry.
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Guys, in the past,
you've seen both Grant and Nate build
different types of foundries.
But today, Nate has found a way to make that even smaller,
the micro metal foundry.
That's right.
Sometimes, you don't need to melt a lot of aluminum,
you just need little bits at a time.
And so for that,
we are going to build an entire foundry
in this tiny little bucket.
Here's the basic idea.
Using plaster and sand,
we'll make a fire resistant shell inside of a small bucket.
We'll then build a propane jet nozzle
that can heat up the inside
of our foundry hot enough to melt aluminum.
And we got this bucket for two dollars at Hobby Lobby.
There are similar versions at most craft stores,
and that's the first thing we're going to need is
a little bucket.
Next thing we need
is this little stainless steel coffee scoot those from Walmart,
and this was also about two dollars,
and this is going to be used for two things.
First, we're going to use it for measuring,
and then it's actually going to become the crucible
inside the foundry.
To start our build,
we're also going to need a cup and a spoon just for mixing,
some water,
some Plaster of Paris and playground sand.
We need to fill this bucket about 65% to 75% of the way.
So what we're going to do is two batches of plaster, sand,
and water mixed up.
So we need four scoops of plaster, four scoops of sand,
and three scoops of water.
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Mix those three ingredients together thoroughly,
being sure to get all
of the plaster off of the bottom of the cup.
Now, you have a little bit of time to mix here,
but as soon as you start feeling this warm-up,
that's the plaster reacting to the water,
and that lets you know that you gotta move fast.
This small quantities with the sand,
you've got a few minutes,
but it is something you need to be aware of.
Once it's all stirred in,
pour it into the bucket and then mix up a second batch.
If you have really big cups,
you can do this all at once with eight scoops of plaster,
eight scoops of sand,
and six scoops of water.
[Music]
Okay, our bucket is now about two-thirds full.
We do want to try and get out all of the air bubbles we can,
so it's good to take a minute or two,
and just tap the bucket to sort of vibrate it,
and get as much air out as you can.
All right.
Our de-bubbled, degassed plaster is about ready.
So now, we're going to take our plastic cup,
and we're going to drop this down into the center.
The water is in there to add weight.
So all of this is going to displace the plaster,
and it's gonna make a nice border around this cup.
So I'm going to put this down, and try and position just right.
Calli's going to use the tape to tape the cup
in place to just hold it right where we want it.
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With your cup full of water taped in place inside the plaster,
you'll want to give it at least an hour,
possibly more depending on the temperature
and humidity of where you are.
If you want it to speed up a little bit,
you can also throw it in the oven on the lowest setting
for an hour or so.
While that's curing,
we're going to work on building the burner.
The burner for this foundry
isn't going to use one of the large propane tanks.
We're actually just going to use the small ones,
either the blue ones or the green camping version.
First thing we're going to need is a torch head
that goes to a propane tank.
This is the kind of just threads right on.
And normally, you can just use this as a torch.
However, this,
while it is pretty hot, isn't quite the volume of fire
that we want, and it's definitely hard to place.
With these types of propane tanks,
if you turn them upside down or anything
to get this nozzle,right where we would want it,
they do have a tendency to start flickering
and sputtering after a while.
And so, we are going to hook up a whole little hose,
and build ourselves a customized burner.
We've got some thread tape,
a 1/4 inch or 6 millimeter wire welding contact tip.
These things are removable.
They're replaceable,
and they have just this wonderful sized hole
as the nozzle.
We have a 1/2 inch to 1/4 coupling.
This is some steel pipe.
Got four of these socket cap screws.
They have the hex head in them,
and they are machine threaded screws.
This is a number 8 by 32 threads.
And this one is 3/4 of an inch long.
We have a 1/4 inch brass pipe cap.
We have a 1/4 inch to barbed fitting,
and a 3 inch segments of 1/4 inch pipe.
And lastly, we've got about a three-foot segment
of 3/4 inch braided hose.
This is what's actually going to carry our propane
from the tank down into our burner.
So our first step is going to be the take our coupling,
file it down,
and drill and tap it so that our screws fit in.
We're filing this down
because trying to drill right into the side of a curved pipe
is pretty impossible.
At least accurately.
[Music]
We've now had the four sides of this coupling filed down,
and they aren't being all filed down in the same places.
We've got two that are going to be right here at the top,
and the ones on the sides are going to be a little bit lower.
Now, in each of those four spots,
we need to drill a hole using a 9/64 inch drill bit.
Once the holes are drilled using 8x32 tap to add some threads.
[Music]
We've now got all four holes drilled and tapped,
so that we can thread our screws into them.
We now need to do the same drilling and tapping process
with our brass cap,
so that our contacts tip will thread into that.
With a 3/16 inch drill bit,
we want to drill a hole as close to the center
as possible into our brass cap.
This time, we're going to be using an M6 by 1.0 tap.
Now, this contact tip threads beautifully into the threads
that we just cut.
So we have all of our pieces, it's time for assembly.
[Music]
With the thread tape,
this should form a pretty tight seal.
It was a little bit on the loose side before,
but now, it goes in
and it shouldn't let any gases escape.
That's what's important.
And now, we need to take the four screws,
and fit them into the sides,
and have them hold everything in place.
The four screws are going
to grip onto the contact tip to hold everything in place.
So the contact tip fits down through all four of those,
and then once it's in place,
we want to tighten these four screws by hand.
Make sure that doesn't go anywhere.
Once we've got it lined up, we want to take an allen wrench,
and just tighten those screws down to really hold it in place.
[Music]
That's now holding itself in place quite nicely.
Just what we're looking for.
On the other side of this coupling,
we're going to attach our 3 inch piece of 1/4 inch pipe.
[Music]
We now need to attach the hose
from the propane tank on to our burner.
We need to modify this so it can attach to the hose,
and so it has a higher propane output.
First Step, we're just going to unscrew this top diffuser.
As this nozzle is,
when you attach it to a propane tank,
it lets out just the tiny tiniest amount of propane.
You can't even see the hole where the propane's coming out.
It's that fine.
Right in the center there,
there's just tiny bits of corrosion on the brass,
and that's enough to just entirely hide it.
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There you go.
If I turn that up even the tiniest bit,
it's going to go out.
We need to widen that nozzle.
We're going to use
the smallest size drill bit that comes with our drill set,
which is 1/16 of an inch.
If you drill this out,
it'll work for your micro metal foundry,
but it will not work for regular propane torch anymore.
[Music]
[inaudible].
To attach the hose onto this,
it already has threads, and we're going to use them.
First, what we need to do is make the hose
a little bit more pliable.
So we're going to take a lighter,
and slowly warm it up
so that it can fit right on these threads.
We'll have to push and twist this on,
it should work pretty nicely.
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Here we go.
That's a good seal.
Hose attached.
On the other side,
we're just going to be using the barbed,
and that just fits in.
All right, so now,
we should be able to attach this to our propane tank,
attached that onto the burner we've just built.
Hopefully, we'll get a nice ignition.
[Music]
Our burner is built and attaches to our propane tank,
so let's get back to finishing up our plaster filled bucket,
and turning this all into a foundry.
The plaster is largely set.
It's not a 100% cured yet,
but it's definitely set enough that we can take this off.
I'm just gonna pour out the water here.
All right, so now we should be able to collapse this cup,
just like Grant did in the larger version.
Use sort of a twisting,
squeeze all the cup down smaller.
[Music]
There it goes.
We now want to use a hole saw
to make a hole in the side of our bucket.
Just large enough
for the nozzle of our burner to fit in.
Our goal is to keep it as low down as possible in the bucket,
but not so low that when we're using the whole saw,
it's going to cut into the bottom.
[Music]
All right.
With our plaster cured this much, it's,
like I was saying, it's not cured all the way,
but it was cured some.
It's extremely easy to drill through.
[Music]
See what this looks like.
World's tiniest foundry?
There you go.
Tiny little foundry with a powerful gas jet.
Do we have any marshmallows?
[Music]
It's almost the size of a jumbo marshmallow.
Here, I made this for you.
Thank you.
Mmm.
Taste like a drill.
Now, while our burner does work inside our foundry at this point,
we really want to make sure
that the plaster gets all the way dry
before we really use it for anything.
So you can just let it sit for a day or two,
but what I recommend is putting in the oven at about 200 degrees
for two hours,
and then at about 450 degrees for another three hours.
That should really bake it dry.
So plaster,
while you're using it and while it's drying,
has a tendency to crack,
which is one of the reasons that we tapped all
of the bubbles out of it beforehand.
If you're worried
about the longevity of your micro metal foundry,
you can also use Grant's trick of tearing up a little bit
of course steel wool,
and mixing it in with the slurry
before you cast it into the bucket.
It kind of acts like mini rebar.
You may also notice
that our propane tank is sitting in a bowl,
and that's because these propane tanks
with the nozzle opened up extra wide,
as they depressurize quickly,
they tend to cool down quite a bit,
and once they get too cold,
the propane inside them doesn't exit as quickly,
and you end up having keeping your flame consistent.
So this is just a bowl of lukewarm water,
and our propane tank is just sitting in it,
and that will help prevent it from freezing up too fast
as we let it burn.
Now, we're going to go ahead and take our scoop,
and turn it into our crucible.
We were going to do that is take this handle,
bend it over so we have something to raise
and lower it out of the foundry.
[Music]
This now fits nicely into our foundry,
but it actually just goes too far down in.
We don't want it resting quite at the bottom,
because it won't get the fire circulating
around it as well as we want.
So we're also going to use a little bit
of hanger wire to build a stand.
The hanger wire is made of steel,
so we shouldn't have to worry about it melting.
Although the coating
will burn off the first time you put it in there,
but that will just hold our crucible right at the height
that we wanted.
[Music]
Yay, it fits.
A little stand that goes down inside.
Our crucible sits right on top of that.
We are ready to test out our micro metal foundry.
There's a couple things we need to do.
First is we probably want to set this on
like a piece of brick or stone or something.
It doesn't conduct a lot of heat down,
but we still wouldn't want to put it on a wooden surface.
The other is, of course,
that we need some aluminum to try and melt down.
I think we're going to try using some soda tabs.
[Music]
That right there is the coating on the hanger catching on fire.
Now, let's let this run, and see if we can help these tabs.
[Music]
All right, our aluminum is nice and molten.
So I'm going to take it out of the foundry,
and then we've got,
I made this tiny little sword shape mold.
There are a few other things that we might be able to try,
but we're going to start with the sword one.
Now, aluminum is a very lightweight metal as you know,
and with this little of it,
it doesn't have a lot of weight to push down
and force it to flow.
So my plan is to pour it on,
and then use the wire to try and encourage it
into the shape that we want.
We'll give this a shot.
[Music]
Hey!
You made a very tiny aluminum sword.
There's a sword shape in there.
We may have over poured the aluminum just a little bit,
but it need some encouragement,
but that flowed into the general shape there.
We made some aluminum with our micro metal foundry,
and now, I've got some Orbeez that are not fully expanded.
So they are also little,
and we're going to now pour the aluminum into those Orbeez,
and see what result we get.
Here it goes.
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Oh?
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Let's just make sure this is cool down all the way.
Our micro metal molding.
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We've made an alien.
>> We got a good shape. >> That's actually so cool.
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