At the last swap meet I was talking with him about my casting attempts and showed him a couple of the muffins. We discussed that I was using cans and whatever scraps I could gather. Of course we all know cans are a horrible source but even the scrap pieces of aluminum I found weren't the greatest.
David mentioned that he has aluminum scrap from time to time, generally left overs from things he's cut on his CNC plasma, if I was interested. Um, heck yes! He said to check with him the following week and he'd try to round some of it up. We traded a couple of emails and I stopped by a week or so later to pick up the scrap.
Holy cow did he hook me up! Most of his "scraps" look better than the pieces in my stock pile. He gave me almost a bucket full which included two parts of an engine case from one of the bikes he's building. I'm not sure what it's to but I'll get better pictures before I cut it up to melt it.
He also gave me the leftover .250" aluminum sheet from some parts he cut.
I finally had a little bit of time tonight to stop by TechShop and cut the sheet remnant into more manageable sizes. A couple of minutes with the band saw to rip them down lengthwise.
Then about ten or so minutes on the Iron Worker to shear them to the perfect length to fit in my crucible.
No surprise, it made short work of the aluminum. I just set my bucket behind it, fed it the material, and let the hydrolic awesomeness do its thing. Beats the hell out of a cut off disc or sawzall which is the way I would've had to do it at home.
I did show some restraint though and cut around the largest contiguous section of aluminum. I had already almost filled the bucket with scrap for melting and thought that piece was big enough to still be usable for something.
Definitely a big "thank you" goes out to David. That was very generous of him to give me all this scrap. Hopefully, if/when I get this casting thing down, I can do some parts or pieces for him in return.
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