Hey Glort...
To measure consumption it has been a bit of a thumb suck.... Fill tank to 13L mark, warm up the beast with some kero, ease on the gunk slowly and keep it clean flaming, measuring the time taken to empty the tank and an average consumption is reached... it runs just under 1/4hr on one tank at fair throttle, not at full steam though, I am still playing around a bit, but bear in mind, the first couple of minutes are fairly slow to start with until the thing starts cooking properly... This eve, while messing around with the output semi contained, we got about 2hrs out of the 13L tank with enough usable heat to smelt the ali debris easily and the burner just ticking over... Containing the heat is a big plus... I couldnt rev it too much more, as the crucible we were using had the bottom brazed on and i didnt want to destroy it. I think it was originally intended for lead casting until JP spotted it and hauled it into the fireplace...
As you probably gather, we built a temp fireplace with some bricks and the ceramic pipe.... The pipe held up quite well, it did crack, but is still in one piece. As to the pipe being an advantage, of this I am not sure, the next few tests will be standard red bricks only to see how they hold up.... Two layers of bricks, yellow hot in the inside, and you can almost hold your hand against the outside... I think that will be good enough for what I need to do... Take a look in the vids of the previous link, there is a brief flash of the pile of mud pies we used to contain things today... I added it to the list this evening...
My main interest with this creature will be brass/bronze and copper casting, maybe a bit of glass casting too if i can get round to it. I love making miniature cannons in brass and gunmetal, but hate to machine 80% of it away in making the barrels, only to stick trunions on afterward... I have cast ornamental cannons before in brass, but had to do it on the sly using the exhaust heat from a kiln when I was in the vitrified department of a grinding wheel manufacturing company... now and then I managed to have a bit of surplus bronze from a bearing casting job, how fortunate, in its molten state, and I always kept a mold or two ready, just in case!
Believe it or not, I think that elbow I am using is off a fire sprinkler system too, a plumber mate brought round a crate of assorted fittings and the 4" stuff is a bit big for my oxy-hydride exploits so they have been relegated to the "alternate use" category... mini crucibles, flame directors, neighbour pacifying missiles etc....
I did a small test on the fuel flow using water and pressurizing at a few different readings... The minimum usable pressure is around 5psi for the small 5mm pipe, most effective at around 15psi, and little to be gained above that... Using a small diameter pipe makes handling so much easier, 1/2"is nice, but a pain in the ass as it is just too stiff to lie relaxed and stay out of the way... Plus, 5mm is much cheaper and above all, I ended up with a 30m roll of it somehow....
Regarding the angle and positioning of the fuel inlet - I played with angles and position a bit and found that with the fuel exit at center of air-stream, about 6 to 8" from the entrance to the combustion chamber, I am getting pretty good results. It seems that if you go closer to the chamber, you get a stream of oil that hits the far side and pools too easily, causing surging. move it further than 8" from the chamber, and you get the oil adhering more to the sides of the inlet pipe, again causing puddling and surging. Stick within 6 to 8" and it breaks up the stream of fuel but doesn't have the sticking to the sides problem either... the inlet pipe is 2" dia and the blower is also of the jumping castle variety.... Maybe I am just lucky, or then again, a bit of playing with fluid dynamics in my earlier years actually taught me some things that I have remembered... Or was it a holiday of water skiing... No matter, its still fluid dynamics after all...
Today I made the ingot mold, tomorrow will probably be some fire tongs, ladles, scrapers or casting hooks... while melting a few more bits into ingots and prepping materials...
Who knows, next week I might even get a chance to crack some oil for my LISTERoid... Cant flame me now guys, its a LISTER related post!!!
So much fun, so little time!
Keep it spinning...
Cheers
Ed
