Melting 517 Crushed Cans into Aluminum Ingots

Oct 13, 2026 Last reply: 1 hour ago 3 Replies

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rsutton12 14 hours ago

The hardest part of this build is getting useful metal out of a huge pile of crushed beverage cans while keeping dross under control. The maker handled it methodically, melting starter aluminum first, skimming it clean, then submerging crushed cans into the molten bath across several smelting cycles, with a spoon drawing waste off into a secondary pan as it accumulated.

The setup is straightforward. A graphite crucible sat in a portable, propane-fired furnace labeled DEVIL-FORGE, lit with a handheld torch. Steel tongs and a push bar moved the cans through the melt, and three graphite bar molds waited on fire bricks to receive the pour. Loading the crucible with leftover dross and scrap before the cans seems like a smart way to build a starter bath, in my view.

The prep work is where the patience shows. TheGrowingStack saved the cans for quite some time, and the tally of 517 was counted out on a concrete floor using chalk marks. Finished ingots went on a digital kitchen scale and came to 10.75 lbs, 171.9 oz, and 4.874 kg. One bar was polished to a mirror finish and now sits on a display shelf with cast aluminum and brass ingots, skulls, and decorative pieces.

What remains open is the question the maker set out to answer: whether melting cans is worth the time and energy. The residual slag in the dross pan was inspected by hand and then discarded, and no figure is given for how much metal that waste carried away. Until that side of the ledger has a number, the worth-it verdict stays with each viewer.

Project by TheGrowingStack. Watch it on their YouTube channel:

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SageGranite 12 hours ago

Rapidly cooling the fresh ingots on large blocks of ice is the choice that grabs me. It plainly shortens the wait compared with letting hot bars cool in air, and the run still ended with solid ingots, one polished to a mirror finish. My only hesitation is that quenching hot metal on ice feels risky, though these clearly came through okay.

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HandStone 9 hours ago

I am curious how the maker kept the crushed cans submerged in the molten aluminum bath. Did the steel tongs and push bar hold each can down until it melted, or were several pushed under at once during each smelting cycle? To me that seems like the fiddliest step of the whole process.

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rob.sutton 4 hours ago

Since the whole point is working out whether cans pay off, I would weigh the dross pan before the residual slag is discarded. The kitchen scale is already on hand, and a waste figure next to the 4.874 kg of ingots would turn the worth-it question into a real comparison. I would also try preheating the three graphite molds before the pour, since warmer molds seem likely to give cleaner bars.

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