Melting disc brake rotors (crucible camera action)

today's video it's all about melting disk brake rotors this is one here it's a vented disc brake rotor and the reason why I wanted to melt them today is because every now and then I get asked the question it's difficult to find cast iron well unless you live in the middle of a desert every garage you can go to will always have to disc brake rotors which is about 15 to 16 kilos with this one here and everyone knows where a garage is they're very easy to find disc brake rotors can be a little bit difficult to break up so what I use is an angle grinder and cut along there and along there and it breaks quite easily you'll see along there and there is the brake that saves you a lot of trouble swinging with a hammer also I'd like to show you another example of how disc brake rotors come this is a non-ventilated as you'll see that's ventilated and that's non-ventilated just a solid disc there they're both cast-iron and very useful to melt there is one thing about disc brake rotors that's surface there that's where the disc brake pad rubs on so it needs to be a certain hardness so it doesn't wear out too quickly so what I use ferrosilicon you don't have to use it but it's pretty well if you want a soft casting to machine it's a good idea to put in ferrosilicon into your cast iron if you're melting disc brake rows this is the pattern of mine it's for a surface plate and what I'll be doing will be melting iron from the disc brakes and this is what the pads for the test out to see if they're just brakes work really well as car so I'm normally a with dust talc on that this time I'm going to try something different going to use graphite the oil dirty [ __ ] it is but see then improves the surface finish on the casting yeah I kind of quit covering up the facing saying this is the backing sand I'm putting all ever got some deep pockets in here I've just got to push our fingers in to make sure that they pack in properly this mold is a little bit different Tower I normally do it all the casting and molten metal will be in the COPE the top part of the box and that's why the screw hole is just there so I've got to cover it up and put the top box on and with duck down graphite instead of talc and we sit on some more facing scene [Applause] there we put our back in sandal and we'll give it a quick round [Applause] yeah one thing I've got to do I've got to make dead sure there's no soft patches around here because this box here will be on top and like I said all the metal will be in that box and if it leaks out it's a total disaster next thing you have to do take the top box off [Applause] and give the patent the rep now we'll see how easy the patent is to get out and the mall right away little bit there so I patched it up now we've got a cups minigame [Applause] [Applause] and what's left he's not going to kind of run a bar but I'll do that on the other box yeah get this piece of cardboard off now we can cut the runner bar in here here I've got a runner bark up and down interconnect the two in gates on the faceplate mole no it's ready to be forward [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you this is what happens when you've only got a ten millimeter gap between a really thick iron casting and a wooden flask it just burns and I've tipped heaps and heaps of water on it that box you be in the bidding by the time I finish with this it's been about 15 minutes since I last film this box it's still incredibly hot and let me show you just how hot it is put some water on the end of my fingers now have a listen to this yeah it's been five hours since a poor disgusting and it's still too hot to touch I'll just show you between here and the casting and the wooden box it's about 12 millimeters so it's any wonder if burnt and the same for the other side and at the back it's roughly 20 millimeters or what the mazing thing about this casting is all of the molten metal was in the cope in the top box if there was any kind of a leak it would have spilt the whole contents onto the floor but it didn't well the witch test on the left is virtually all white cast iron it's extremely hard that was before I added fear of silicon and the witch test on your right the fairest silicon did improve it's a bit more grayer in the center but the edges are still white so I'll have to do next time it's add a lot more fare of silicon to make a gray cast iron now here is the surface plate casting it's all being cleaned up and it weighs 11.81 kilograms now what I found and you'll find - if you try big castings like this is they take a quite a while to change from a liquid to a solid and they will trait into the grains in the sand and especially in these corners here that's very hard to clean out so what I used was an air chisel with a blunt end and it gets in those little corners in there and cleans them out very nicely here is the top side of the casting it might be a bit hard to see but what's happened is I've packed it just a little bit too hard and what happens is you get like an earthquake the sand expands and has little gutters indents I have to machine them out that's what happens the really flat surface like this it's difficult to get these really smooth the other point is with this wedge test you see it was all white you go here may even touch it now you'd expect this to be hard but it's a very large chalky casting and it takes a quite a while to cool down now for foiler files really nicely so this will machine all over you

Channel: luckygen1001

Views: 832,884

Rating: 4.6941023 out of 5

Keywords: melting cast iron, furnaces, scrapping, molding, patterns, old school methods, molding sand

Id: CAq7iVmNJkQ

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 05 2018