LFMC10 - Household Casting

LFMC 10 - Household Fixture Casting

Fireplace Mantle Bracket...

This is the pattern that I started out with...

It's some sort of Celtic design, that both my wife & liked enough that it would now become part of our Fireplace.

Over this past summer we've been renovating our living room, the final job has been to replace the original red brick fireplace with a hand split stone face and mantle.

My chance to really set off the project was with a pair of cast mantle brackets.

I did try to route the pattern as shown, but it had too many issues, namely the detail was too fine.

Here is the re-vamped or optimized pattern.

There is a left and right hand pattern that will be assembled together to form the bracket.

The G-Code that is run on the mill is almost a half meg in size and takes almost 3 hours to run.

The fact that there are so many curved lines seems to drive the code through the roof.

Here are the 4 pieces that will make-up the two brackets.

...and here are the brackets assembled with hot glue.

Once the inner patterns were assembled, they were sanded and shaped to minimize the appearance of a parting type line.

The lower unit had enough of a gap that I opted to lay a strip of masking tape over the edge to ensure that it filled properly.

The entire bracket is quite large, certainly larger than anything I've tried to cast in the past.

As I didn't have any metal bins that would have held the pattern I foolishly thought I could do it in this plastic tub.

What a mess, the metal overflowed the side and ran down the side, once it hit the base it surrounded the tub and caught fire.

Once it melted enough of the tub, the sand inside let loose, I think you get the picture...

As always undeterred, I picked-up a 75L galvanized trash bin from Canadian Tire.

This bin has every single grain of sand I own in it.

To keep the metal contained in the feeder, the traditional pop cans are replaced with a proper tin can.

Since the can easily fits in the crucible, it will be no problem recovering the Alum that will ultimately fill it.

This has to be one of the best shots I have of the styrene coming to the surface as the liquid Aluminum flows down into the pattern.

The camera literally caught the instant that the vapors ignited with a quiet poof.

Here it is right out of the sand and stinkin' hot.

The pattern appears to be intact, but it was hard to tell as so much sand had impacted into the grooves.

And finally here is the bracket after wire-brushing it down, and applying a few coats of High-Temp black paint.

The detail is reasonable, and identical on the other side.

The casting wasn't shaken or settled in any way so there appears to be a rougher surface finish than normal, but it matches the Cast Iron front of the fireplace well.

The 2 posts on the bracket will be embedded in concrete and the bracket will be turned 90 degrees clockwise when installed.

This shot depicts my latest invention the "Manifold Mangler"...

Actually it is a hydraulic Wood Splitter, that just eats Alum.

My lawyer insists that I not only advise that this is inherently dangerous, but to FORBID anyone from undertaking such an exercise.

The manifold pictured here is rather soft and very ductile, while later I busted-up a 4 Cyl crank case that was brittle as hell and had various sizes of metal flying in all directions.

In this shot the tractor isn't even running, otherwise I would definitely be wearing safety glasses...

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