aluminum ingots in the boonies

Any aluminum you acquire by your suggested method will be virtually worthless to you as a product for machining. The grades of aluminum that are machinable are not generally cast, and are generally artificially aged for hardness and machinability (the 2XXX, 6XXX and 7XXX series, for example). Aluminum you melt will be dead soft, likely filled with porosity and have ugly machining characteristics, and could have poor grain structure, depending on how quickly you cool the cast metal. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

If you can find 6061 aluminum, and if you can melt it successfully without absorbing hydrogen, and if you can do a solution anneal and then artificially age your end product, it is possible you could end up with something that would work for you, but I don't hold a lot of hope for all those things to come together unless you're willing to do a lot of work getting properly set up to accomplish them properly.

If, by chance, you do try, and enjoy some degree of success, please let us know.

Harold

Ick...

The Eternal Squire

Don't you hate it when a plan *doesn't* come together?

By the way I had a similar dialogue in the little town near me. I heard about a metal recycling yard so went to see if they had anything machinable to sell. The Chinese guy running the place explained in very broken English that he only buys and then ships to China. Nothing for sale.

Steve.

I melt scrap for machining. That said, I used previously cast scrap, no cans, extrusions, etc. If it was cast before, then odds are pretty good it will cast OK. I pour into a loose sand that has chunks of insulation foam in it. The foam vaporizes and the aluminum takes the shape while the sand just sits there. The foam is the pink or blue stuff from the building supply. It is typically in

1/2" thick sheets, but can be glued together to make blocks. I have some web pages about this here: more info on casting, I suggest: luck!

Ron Thompson On the Beautiful Florida Space Coast, right beside the Kennedy Space Center, USA

hobby pages are here: Severe stupidity is self correcting, but mild stupidity is rampant in the land.

-Ron Thompson

Where are you located? If in the US, USPS has a couple of flat rate boxes that are really reasonable for shipping. What's your definition of "reasonable amounts" of small pieces of aluminum? Maybe some of the group has a few chunks of 6061 they could part with. Heck--I have a few smaller pieces of 6061 I'll send you to play around with, if you will cover the shipping. IIRC it's $8.10 for all you can stuff in the box. I get orders of

2000 .45 bullets in a box, and there is room left. Give me a" mail to "address!

Your casting plan looks expensive and impractical to me. Way more so than just biting the bullet and buying what you can use.

You can cast more effectively than that using a weedburner torch (AKA tiger torch), a few fireplace bricks, and a steel pipe crucible. Do a google search on Green sand casting for insight into moldmaking (it can be pretty primitive, cat litter for clay, sandblasting sand or play sand, and water). Cast aluminum does not machine near as nice as wrought barstock, but it can work.

I find it pretty hard to beleive that there are not a pile of places to search out, in an area that can support two wreckers.

Got local garages? The mechanics there likely chuck dead parts into a pile or into barrels waiting for the scrap guy. Sometimes available for asking, sometimes an offer to pay what they wold get from the scrap guy is what it takes. Got an airport or airfeild around? dead airplane parts are a pretty decent source of machinable stock. As an example, aluminum prop blades can be cut into slabs and used as stock, same with landing gear legs. Every small town airport I have ever seen that was able to attract a few guys that would put in hangars, had at least a couple guys there that had junk stacked up "just in case it came in handy" or just because they had not got motivated to haul it away.

Got monitors at the local dump? Many dumps are starting to prevent scrounging and recycling, but if you are that far out in the boonies, perhaps not yet in your area. A hacksaw, and a couple pairs of vicegrip type pliers are a minimum kit, add as required.

Farm auctions or sales are another good source of stock.

Where ARE you, anyway?

Cheers Trevor Jones

Trevor,

I am located about 40 to 60 miles west of Gallup, NM, on I-40, on the Navajo Reservation in Apache Country, AZ. Phoenix is 5 hours drive. Tucson is 8 hours drive. Albuquerque is 5 hours drive. Gallup is 1 hours drive.

I have already checked out and exchausted Gallup's possibilities. Nobody there deals with anything thicker than 1/8 inch plate. I got the same "sell only to China" response when I asked a couple mechanics about piston heads.

The local dump is owned by the Navajo, and they do use monitors and a truck sized dumpster for holding deposits. Thier position is that anything that the dumpster takes then becomes the property of the Nation, scavenging prohibited.

Ironically I'm not Navajo, else I could utilize extended family connections :)

The Eternal Squire

"We Reserve The Right To Refuse Service To Anyone".

Ain't that the truth!

The Eternal Squire

My general idea is to start a halftime business while being a homemaker full time while my wife works as a schoolteacher.

I am capable of doing embedded systems programming, software tools design, and minor electronics design and testing, all from my former career of 15 years as a software designer during the dot bomb era and recently. Once I add CNC milling to my skills, I then have the ability to become a minor manufacturer.

My wife has basically told me that my spare time is mine to use, and that I want to start a business great, but don't spend any of her money. This is fine by me, because at least she has given me The Gift Of Time, which is a lot more generous than some wives allow thier husbands these days.

Since I have a lot more time than money, it makes more sense to try to use my skills and other peoples' advice to turn time and raw materials into money and then reinvest, rather than try to buy refined materials with killer gas prices and outrageous UPS fuel surcharges for rural areas. "Reasonable cost" can either be thought of as "nearly free under the right circumstances", or "cheap enough to allow a profit margin".

Your offer of chunks for me to train on is wonderful and I am mindful to take it, but I can hardly presume to design a business plan around that. On the other hand, the truck recycler is my best local hope if I can use it right. The $64K question is being how best to turn all that wrecked aluminum into something useful. The wall extrusion alternates in thickness between 1/16th inch and 1/4 inch thick ribs. There are a few wheels, though, can a hacksaw go through those?

Bill, email me at eternalsquire at at hotmail dot dot com, we can arrange a transaction there. Suggestions from others also welcome.

Thank you all,

The Eternal Squire

Your email doesn't work. Send me your address.

Richard W.

Try eternalsquire at at hotmail dot dot com

Looked at your page. Cool stuff (or should I say, Hot stuff). But does the cost of propane make the casting worthwhile?

The Eternal Squire

Yup, yer in the sticks allright.

Any way of working the teacher connection? The school have a metal shop? Art classes, jewelry? Just thinking that you might be able to work out a deal to have some stock brought in as part of one of their orders. Shop teachers make a good "connection" to as usually, they are also involved with other like minded folk.

On the subject of jewelry, sorta, have you considered machining wax? It is used for trialling CNC programs in the real world and is relatively reuseable. The wax used is a bit different than regular parrafin and IIRC there are some homebrew recipes online if you go looking. The one I recall involved melting the remnants of a bunch of plastick milk bottles and adding parrafin to the mix. Not for the pyrophobic, methinks. You could also CNC out waxes for lost wax casting, if that turns yer crank. The real advantage of the stuff is that you can proof designs with little or no tool wear.

Didja check at the regional airport at Gallup? Is it one of those "all behind the wire" outfits or a little more casual than that still? Hooking up with airplane homebuilders is a possible for picking up paying work, as these guys often want tools made or modified. There should be at least one FAA aircraft inspector at the airport that can help you make contacts, if you wanted to follow up on that.

The only other suggestions I can come up with for local suppliers is to get to know the neighbors and find out if there are any backyard mechanics out there that you might hit up for some of their castoffs. Networking is a bit key. Once word gets around that you can do something of use to these guys, deals just sorta start to form.

The clowns that pulled the "only to China" crap, did they say what they were getting paid for their scrap? I find it a bit tough to beleive that the buyers there had the market sewn up so tight that a seller would not entertain a small deal on the side. Unless that gets outside the "no cost" limitations. I could see them not giving the stuff away, as it amounts to a part of their bottom line.

Brass machines nice, too. Cast brass valves are pretty common, but of fair value to the scrap merchant. They can be recast with minor difficulty. Cast iron can machine well, though it can be a bit messy. Putting the "scrounge" eye to the world can start turning up some odd sources for stuff. Sometimes the art is in recognizing the opportunity, sometimes it's in not getting carried away and hoarding everything.:-)

I assume that city trips are not common. I would figure that there would be newsgroup guys around those citys that could put you onto some of their "sources" if you wer eable to get there with some time on your hands.

Cheers Trevor Jones (in Tropical Northeast Alberta, aka Cold Lake)

So glad to now have the official designation :}

I gotta be slow and easy about this, I don't want to get my wife fired for using school facilities for personal gain. We have a high turnover quotient of people discovered to either unscrupulous, abusive, or just too plain wierd.

Absolutely. I plan on using this for self-training before I get into real metal. I am thinking I could quite possibly advertise for machining wax molds for the silversmiths around here, maybe even cast and cnc machine silver on contract to them. Of course I want to practice with base metal first. What has the same feel as silver? Keep in mind tho that silversmithing amounts to not much more than a subsistence living, due to the glut on the local market for Native handicrafts, so I can't charge too much.

I'll have to check later. Right now my trailer is 3 feet deep in snow.

My best bet. Maybe an ad in the local Thrifty Nickel might help.

Too right! I started with the yards first.

In Gallup I told them I was willing to pay fair value. The responses I mostly got ranged either from a moderately friendly "it's just not the way things are done around here", to "we have nothing here for you to buy"

Would cast brass have porosity problems? If not, I could live with that. Shame to waste all those tonnes of truck wall, sigh....

That's what I am trying to do, you have some good ideas, tho.

At $15 in gasoline per round trip, you had better believe it buddy :)

Cheers.

The Eternal Squire (somewhere in the US's answer to the Delta Quadrant)

The problem with making stuff out of junk is that unless you are extremely artistic, its still junk, and people wont pay much for it. Now I have no idea what you actually are thinking of making, but its my guess that whether its a car part, an ashtray, a yard ornament, a minature steam engine, or a naked girl for a mud flap, you will be able to sell it for a whole lot more money if you make it properly, from the appropriate material. Not to say you need to buy solid gold bars- but one trip to Phoenix, taking one day of your time and 30 bucks of gas, will let you buy a whole trunkful of real metal- aluminum, steel, or whatever, and be well worth the trip. Assuming you are not going to built objects as big as skyscrapers, you could be machining for months with the results of one carload of metal. And it will be easier, and cheaper in the long run, saving time and money, to use the right material to begin with. Casting your own is something that will cost more than buying new. Electricity, end mills, drill bits, sandpaper, all kinds of consumables get used up making the wrong sized thing work- they all cost money. Time, even if you are not paying for it, adds up. Burn out will occur if you are spending 8 hours instead of 8 bucks. When pricing your finished product, you have to allow for the cost of materials. Everybody else does, believe me.

The way you are going to make money is using your head, not your back. That is to say, spending endless hours converting useless scrap into barely usable material is not a way to make a profit. Coming up with a clever idea that people havent seen before, in whatever field, is. And if you can do that, before you know it, the delivery truck will be bringing in the material.

As Ken Kesey said- Look at the donut, not the hole.

Have you talked to any machine shops? They are getting their materials "somehow..." They may have scraps available or you could probably "piggyback" your order on one of theirs. If there is a delivery truck coming anyhow, the cost of adding a few more pounds to the shipment wouldn't be all that high. But this, of course, would be "new" metal of specified alloy and hardness. And it would be priced accordingly.

The thing many guys new to machining don't quite understand is that, when you try to machine scraps of undetermined ancestry, you don't know what you're getting into. One piece might machine nicely, the next will machine like a concrete block and the next maybe will cut like silly-putty and you will get the "fun" of picking globs of aluminum off your cutter...

On the other hand, 6061-T6 is the most common for the simple reason that it works well for most applications. Hence, most metal stores that sell "leftovers" will have mostly 6061-T6. But it won't all be...

A buddy of mine got burned big time on that one. He ordered some blocks cut to a specific size from a dealer that carred both new and scrap material. Before he got in to pick it up, someone else came along and an employee who didn't know it was to fill Tom's order sold it to him. Tom had promised delivery to his customer and needed the material right then and there. He couldn't wait another three days to get in stock certified to be the alloy he wanted. They found some other stuff that they thought was the right alloy and they could saw to size and he took it. When he loaded it into his CNC, it machined strangely. His finished part was a very complex housing with dozens of threaded holes ranging in size from 0-80 to 4-40. The threads pulled out easily, his customer ended up irate and in short, it was one heck of a mess.

Learning to machine well is as much about learning about the materials as it is about learning about the machine.

All that having been said, there is probably a machine shop or two in Gallup. And I don't think Flagstaff is all that far from you and, as I recall, there is some industrial activity there. Or, if you have to bite the bullet and make a trip into Phoenix on occasion, it might well be worth it to get material that will meet your needs and not just cause you endless frustration.

Sign in a place that sold livestock feed: "If you want good oats, you pay a good price. If you'll settle for oats that's been once through the horse, you'll find that comes cheaper."

Jerry

Thanks, I can melt multiple times on a BBQ tank of propane. Usually a buck or two per melt. As cost rise, more casters are going to waste oil. It is usually free. If you can't stand a little smoke on start-up, it requires pre-heating with propane or some other fuel. Where you are, it probably won't matter if it smokes until hot.

Ron Thompson On the Beautiful Florida Space Coast, right beside the Kennedy Space Center, USA

hobby pages are here: Severe stupidity is self correcting, but mild stupidity is rampant in the land.

-Ron Thompson

Makes sense. This advise is better than anything anyone from SCORE could tell me.

Thanks,

The Eternal Squire

...

Forget making ingots from scrap. Any manufacturing, halftime or not, demands *consistency & predictability*, not to forget efficiency. Casting ingots will put you out of the game for all these reasons.

Before you're geared up and into production you need to learn about materials/alloys and the way that you do that is knowing what materials you're learning on. Skills developed on a chunk of unknown scrap may or may not transfer to that job that requires 6061T6, for example.

My advice: pick a couple of projects that would be good learning vehicles; Google the RCM archives for mail order material sources; and order what you need. More expensive than scrap, less expensive by the time you're ready for minor manufacturing.

My $.02, Bob