Hello.
  December seems to have come around pretty quick, and naturally this is the final edition for 2006. Overall, the year has been quite interesting, and I think we can safely say there are several hundred, no, make that several thousand more people around the globe who have begun to explore the art of metal casting, and why not, the technology and information is available to anyone with the passion and determination to have a go. I am a great believer in being able to use your practical talents and bare hands to create things from metal, and foundry work certainly gives both the brain and hands a solid work out, would you not agree?

Over the past month we have received many emails from people around the world, some have attempted to access the info through our web site, but found they could not because of a lack of credit card, the only other way we could help them was to suggest they use an international bank draft, (which is pretty slow) or western union instant money transfer, both work quite well, but the only drawback with both of these methods are the extra fees to pay.

I hope the past year has been kind to you, and that you've managed to achieve your goals, if you can honestly say you have done better this year than the last, then you should be downright proud of your self, you really deserve a pat on the back, now say aloud, "well done boss". I reckon it's time to crack a tinnie, or open a bottle of champers, or what ever it is you prefer to drink, heck, even a crystal clear cold glass of water will do. Water... crikey that stuff is getting scarce out here in OZ, what with the drought and the wild bush fires here in Victoria and other places, things are pretty ordinary I can tell you.

We have some pictures below that belong to another era, but they are interesting, one of them shows the smelting of aluminium aircraft parts after the 2nd WW, this shows just how scarce metals were back then, it's anyones guess just how many old war birds went through the furnace shown in the photograph, sorry about the quality of the image, I found it in a magazine and when you scan mag images, they suffer from what's known as a "moire pattern", (Fly screen effect) not even photo shop will get rid of the moire pattern. But there is enough detail for you to see what is going on in the photograph.

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This picture is enough to make any lover of old war planes wince, it shows tilt furnace in action at Tocumwal NSW Australia after the 2ndWW, melting down old aircraft parts into aluminium ingots.(See story below)         
                          

      
        
Melting metal and pouring green sand moulds at Lynx Engineering during the 1960s. Lynx were among the leading manufaturers of automotive speed equipment of the time. The set uo here does not look all that different from a serious hobby foundry set up does it?
  

            
         
Another interesting photograph of green sand moulds and  a sand core placed in the drag mould. This project looks to be an inlet manifold casting for a twin SU carburettor set up, a popular conversion with motoring enthusiasts of the time. (See story below)             

Smelting Of WW2 Aircraft Parts.

A small country town in Australia became quite famous during the second world war, in a few short weeks bare farm paddocks were converted into one of the largest Australian war time airfields where big bombers, and the mighty mustangs, kittyhawks and spitfires were based, the airfield was manned by several thousand personnel. But, post WW2 saw a huge number of these fighters, bombers, trainers etc, become obsolete. The Tocumwal airfield in NSW then became one of the biggest scrap yard collections of these old war birds in the southern hemisphere, many hundreds of planes sat there for years while the scrap merchants moved in with their teams of people to begin the job of breaking up the planes to salvage the aluminium to remelt & reclaim the metal which was pretty scarce just after the war.

The image above, while not a particularly good reproduction, shows men at work with a fairly decent tilt type furnace, smelting the Al and pouring ingots, there is no info available about the furnace so I cant fill you in on that side of things, but I just thought you might like to see this to see what went on just after the war. Actually I think there are other furnaces in the picture also, to the leftof the picture looks like a batch melter, and the tall stacks behind the main furnace could be a cupola type of furnace...not sure. But look at the pile of aircraft scrap in the background.

Your guess is as good as mine as to the number of old war planes that had their final days waiting to be melted as scrap, many of those now historic planes would be worth a huge amount of money today that's for sure. And if you were into old aircraft you would be aghast at the thought of the breaking up of these old birds as scrap.
Like to read more about these old planes? Learn more about the wartime activities of Tocumwal through the link below.
And Now A Question For You: How many aircraft do you think were scrapped at Tocumwal after the war? The first correct answer emailed to me gets a FREE hobby foundry ebook package download. (Just in time for Christmas). If you already have the ebook package then please let others have a go at this.

Find the answer to the question here and win a CD Rom:
http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/tocumwal.htm

Lynx Engineering Aust - Casting Inlet Manifolds.

To most Australian motoring enthusiasts during the 60s, the name of Lynx was the name to know if you wanted top quality cast aluminium inlet manifolds for your four or six cylinder car. Lynx were the leaders in the field and produced some very nice cast alloy manifolds which were available at most speed shops. There was nothing quite like putting a bit of "hot up gear" on your car such as a set of twin carbies, lynx made cast aluminium inlet manifolds to suit: twin SUs, twin choke weber & dellorto carburettors.... Real carbies for enthusiasts that wanted more go. (These days you just stick a different management chip in the computer management system) ... How boring is that.

Take a close look at the pictures, I bet there's a few hobby foundry workers around today who could almost match the number of sand moulds sitting on the foundry floor ready to pour, it looks to me like they were also using green sand for the moulding medium... an all time favourite of mine.

The middle picture shows a worker with not much protection gear on while tending the furnace, the sand moulds are spread around on the floor within easy reach for the ladle or pouring crucible, note the raised pouring cups on top of each mould, the purpose of these is to increase the hydrostatic pressure in the mould, it is a bit hard to see whether there is a seperate feeder (sprue) and riser on the moulds, at a guess I think the sprue acts as both. Note also the covers over the moulds to stop foreign matter from falling into the moulds.

The lower picture certainly shows some very sturdy cope & drag mould boxes which are fabricated from steel, not timber, the registration pins certainly wont bend easily will they?

Another unusual feature of the moulding work being done here is the sloping nature of the  mould parting line, this is akin to proping the mould box (Tilting one end) with a chock, but it is all done within the mould box itself. A nice looking sand core has been set into the drag mould too. Take particular note of the core prints, and the cavity for the manifold flanges at the cylinder head end, and the carburettor flange end of the sand mould.

Making an inlet manifold pattern & core box is a challenge that the advanced hobby foundry worker could achieve with a bit of thought & effort. The hardest part is always in the making of the core box and the pattern, but with a little guidance and patience it could be done. The pattern making workshop practice ebook just happens to have a section on the methods used to make core boxes and patterns as seen here, it is worth the read.

The moulder also seems to be blowing loose sand particles out of the mould before closing, an important step if you dont want strange bits of stuff embedded in your casting. In modern foundry work this kind of casting could be produced with an expanded styrene foam pattern, but you need an expensive multi part metal die to create or blow the foam pattern. Traditional pattern making methods allow a small run of castings to be done. Further on in this newsletter, you can take a look at how Mercury Marine make their outboard engines.

Customer Support Requests.

Throughout the year we receive a number of customer support requests, they are not only plea's for help when things go wrong, but also for many other things to do with foundry work. We've decided to share a few of them with you, we are using first name initials of each person who made the request, and please, dont be ambarrased if you see your own customer request here. We are doing this to let other subscribers & customers know that we will do our best to provide help where & when it is required, no one else is likely to know who you are anyway.
So here we go:

country = Tanzania
comments = I wonder if you are able to give me tips about building a furnace using charcoal as energy - power. I am working with introducing metalcasting in Tanzania and the gas is difficult to get, but the charcoal is cheap and very much available.
greetings
city = Bagamoyo.
name = A Stenius.
**An over view of furnace building was provided to get things moving in the right direction.

country = Australia
comments = Would your ebook pack contain a list of Australian suppliers for all the things I will require to start aluminium sandcasting? Or am I asking for too much.
city = Empire Bay  N.S.W
name = D H.
**And the answer is: Yes, we have compiled a fairly comprehensive listing of Australian suppliers, and every Aussie customer gets a copy, if you dont have it flick an email to me.


state = ND
country = United States
comments = Hey!  Not fair!  I wanted to do your ezine thing and the link to get it says error 404. Must be a bad link.  Got another one?
name = J Tor.
** Yep, a new link was supplied and all was well.

(I love this one)
Hi Col,

First of all, I live in The Netherlands and over here it's pretty hard to get some good information concerning the casting of metals. This often results in consulting a foundry who makes the requested parts (including the molds) using one of the oldest metalshaping techniques known to human race........(duh, where did we leave all our ancient knowledge?) While I mostly use really small series it's getting really expensive to get some
small parts cast (not mentioning the problems with dimensioning, casting flaws and the lack of interest in casting small series).

After some deskresearch I ordered a lot of books (some are good on the subject and others are less) which all have their own vision about (sand)casting. But I had some problems finding good literature concerning patern making, in special complex core's. In the search for more information about this subject I stumbeled across your website, and after some reading I came to the conclusion that the Ebooks and Ezine are pretty much practical minded (the way I like it). The part about the making of core's made me deside to order the other stuff also (as an extension of my library on this subject, to further expand my view on the subject and to avoid making the mistakes that others already have done for me).

A second major plus is it's affordability and that it can be pursuaded in small steps (so it's possible to make a thorough evaluation of it's value, before spending a big amount of mony on something you don't need).

And finally there is some great and quick support if there are any problems.
(thanks Col).
Regards,
Sjef.
**We are only to happy to help you Sjef.

state = NJ
country = United States
comments = Hi,

I purchased the Ebook Knowledge tool kit under the recent promotion and never
received any sort of download link. I did receive a paypal receipt but there is no
information enclosed. Please let me know how I can download the ebooks.
Thanks. My paypal transaction ID is: ********29W15370731
Sincerely,
J Evans.
city = Gibbsboro.

** Yes,unfortunately things do go wrong every now and again, but we bend over backwards to put things right again. We quickly provided a new access link to the download page which enabled all of the ebooks to be downloaded. When using pay pal, after you pay, to access the download page you must click the return to merchant button, in the lower right of your screen.


country = Australia
comments = How else can I pay for your 3-vol metal casting made easy offer (not comfortable with net purchases) I'm in Australia.
Peter
city = Perth W.A.
** We realize that not everyone is comfortable with online transactions, luckily for OZ customers direct bank deposits can be done, or we can arrange over the phone credit card transactions.

country = Ireland
comments = Hi, I am thinking of purchasing your book, but first I have a question for you.
I have built a few race engines and I was wondering if it would be possible for me to cast an aluminium alloy cylinder head? I suppose the hardest thing to produce would be the cavity for internal waterways. I know this would be very difficult to make but I am skilled at metalworking and have great patience, however I know next to nothing about metal casting.
Thank you.
city = Co. Sligo
J  McTiernan.

** There is nothing like having a focus and determination, if you start from the very basics, and learn as much as you can, a solid grounding in foundry work and pattern making will allow seemingly difficult projects to succeed, anything is possible. But you must allow time to develop the skills required.

 
And when things go wrong!
After i paid i was expecting to be routed to a down-load page,.. i then never recieved any further information,... dont know were the problem was..........thanks for your e-mail on guiding me to the proper page.......... Larry.

**As always we are ready to provide help with downloads that go wrong, so don't panic if you lose your ebook download link, all you need to do is contact us and we are only to happy to provide another link to make sure you get all of the material. Sometimes we can correct things the moment an email arrives, other times you may have to wait a few hours.

So there you go, if you ever have a problem, you can rest assured knowing that help is not far away, so in the future if you are downloading and the dissruptive Mr Murphy intervenes, just contact us and explain what has happened, nine times out of ten a solution will be found. Just recently a customer inadvertantly paid twice for their package, luckily I was at my computer at the time, and as soon as I realised what was going on, I refunded the over payment straightaway, even before the customer had sent an email to let us know about the overpayment and to request a refund... And their reaction, "Thanks, geez that was quick".

Where Your Global Casting Buddies Live.

Over the past twelve months we've added many new countries to the list from where new customers have requested our hobby foundry ebooks, below is where your fellow casting buddies/mates can be found:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Canada (Most provinces) Germany, Denmark, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Isle of Man, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Cayman Islands, Malta, Mexico, Malaysia, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Singapore, St Helena, Trinidad & Tobago, USA, (Every state except:) CT, NE, PR, SD, VT, VI, WY. And last but not least, Uruguay, United Arab Emirates, South Africa & Zambia.

Hobby metal casting certainly has a world wide spread and interest, every one who has decided to give this ancient metal craft a try is to be commended, it just shows how many practical minded people there are spread around the globe. There must be literally thousands of home workshop projects on the go right now, and as you have probably found out, with some guidance, learning and encouragement it can be done. Perhaps you're still on the discovery trail, that's quite OK, because only you will know when it is time to take action to become more involved. Maybe there's question's or things you are not sure of, email us if you like.

Web Sites Worth Visiting.

Mercury Marine.
http://www.castsolutions.com/archive/07_feature_article.html

From Chainsaws to Stock Car Engines to Outboard Motors at Mercury Marine.
http://www.castsolutions.com/archive/07S2_feature_article.html

A Look at Pressurized Lost Foam Casting.
http://www.castsolutions.com/archive/07S3_feature_article.html

GM Bond - Just Add Water!

The general consensus today is that the local commercial foundry industry faces tough global competition, and to successfully compete foundries must be able to produce the increasingly more complex parts used today.

By using the GMBOND-Process, you can remove cores much more easily than with traditional binders, so casting designs with closer tolerances, thinner walls, and complex core geometries are possible - and easier to achieve than ever before.

GMBOND' Sand Binder breaks down easily and is water soluble, so the core is removed without force that can damage intricate parts, resulting in less scrapped parts and wasted time and money.

Learn More Here.
General Motors Corporation has teamed up with Hormel Foods Corporation to use pork and turkey by products to help manufacture automobile parts. Hormel will supply General Motors with a binding agent made from the animal protein collagen.

According to Joel Johnson, president, chairman and chief executive officer at Hormel, the binding agent will be used to form sand moulds used for casting metal parts. Known as GMBond, the collagen protein binder helps to dramatically reduce foundry costs in manufacturing automotive parts.

Toxic chemicals had previously been used to bind the sand and form the moulds, Johnson said. The phenolic sand is not recyclable and therefore presents a "severe pollution problem." GMBond represents an alternative to the chemicals, and Schreck notes General Motors' larger casting suppliers may use the GM Bond approach. For more info search GM Bond on Google.

Preparation.

Dry binder is added to hot sand during mixing. Next, water is mixed into the binder and sand until dry. Dry coated sand looks like fresh raw sand. The sand must retain enough heat to evaporate the water. Using more binder justifies a higher water addition to ensure even coating. The coating process increases in effectiveness as more mechanical force is applied to the mixture.The batch method is an excellent way to prepare and use sand on an as needed basis. Coated sand can be stored indefinitely. In a production sand coating facility, silica sand was coated with the binder. A sand heater preheated the sand before placing it into the Muller/mixer. Batches of 1000 lb were coated with 1% binder based on sand weight in 5 min or less.

How GM Bond Works.

The raw binder is a dry, fine, slightly tan powder; it is not flammable or reactive. A small amount of preservative is added to ensure bench life while the mixed core sand is wetted, the preservative and binder are not harmful if ingested. Bonding is accomplished by dehydrating the wet core sand mixture. No chemical reaction ever takes place. The biopolymers form bonds as water is removed from the core to form a crystalline structure. One of the most important features of the binder is its water solubility. The binder behaves more or less like a plastic characteristic as water is either added or removed. This allows the bonding mechanism to be reversed, which of course enhances the recycling of the bonded sand.
Information Source: Modern Casting.

Note: Because of the nature of the preparation of GM Bond, employing this sand bonding system in the hobby foundry may be difficult, but it is worth keeping up with new trends in the foundry industry simply because this cutting edge technology will eventually become available to the hobby foundry worker. 

That's it for this issue, trust you have enoyed the ezine throughout the year, and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas & a safe, happy & prosperous New Year.

All the best, and thank you for your support.
Col Croucher.
PS.
If I can recover from the Christmas Holiday mode in time, with a little luck I should be back sometime in January 07. (Grin)