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I wasn’t really getting somewhere with the barbecue furnace, so I got myself a better version that uses propane gas.
Over time I have been collecting a lot of aluminium scraps. What you see there in the bucket was probably about a third of it. Time to melt it all down!
I’ve always loved playing with fire.
btw; Sorry Inventables 😉
This time around, the melting process was way easier. I got all my scraps melted in no time. Oddly enough though, the Coca Cola cans I had did not melt. Other (cheaper) soda cans were gone in mere seconds, but the Coke cans weren’t budging despite turning red hot. Strange, but I don’t care enough to look into it.
I cast a bunch (over 10 kg) of relatively pure muffin ingots, ready to be used in my next project.
Possibly the Coke cans have more plastic/PTFE lining than the cheaper cans? Hence holding together at high temps even when others melt completely.
This is a potential concern on melting any scrap metals, the various impurities introduced from recycled post-manufactured pieces.
Did you separate your ingots by source materials at all?
I think I’d probably have split it by type of aluminium (because the alloys are probably different) and have a completely separate one for source materials likely to introduce non-alloy material (plastics and other crap). Just my 2c, haven’t tried it but would love to.
Love your work & blog, Frederico! I’m currently trying to convince the wife to start a Layzor build project with our son 🙂
Thanks!
It turns out Coca Cola doesn’t use aluminium anymore for their 33cl cans. They’re steel now. Live and learn 😉