Electric stove for metal casting?

Is there a point besides proving it can be done on a kitchen stove ?
Dont misunderstand me, I like the idea of proving it can be done in a regular kitchen with just some insulation. One hour is not bad. How much material did you melt ?

You can find micro wave oven inserts that allow you to melt up to copper and silver. That's even higher melting and would allow you a broader range of experiments.
This means a few purchases such as crucibles but reduces the problems that may arise with whatever you are melting and steel.

I did have quite a laugh some months ago in my kitchen looking for a hot plate mitten. Who has 2 pairs of welding / high temperature insulated gloves in their kitchen ?

Cast iron is more carbon steel than carbon steel is. It will quench harden even with extremely slow cooling rates. An annealing on the timescale of days is required to soften it.

OP: You don't need fancy insulation for aluminum. I do a lot of diy metal casting. Just use ordinary wall insulation, the rockwool or glass fiber kind. It will keep most of its important properties up to 800°C or so. It does lose some structural properties in the 300°C range due to some polymerish binders being destroyed, but that just makes it a bit fragile and doesnt affect it as long as you don't try to rearrange it. The first heating will stink a little because of this(and most probably isn't healthy) so that's best suited to do outside, but it also only needs to be done once.

That said, I gave up on electric heating a long time ago. You just can't get enough power to do anything meaningful in an acceptable amount of time. I use a dead simple air/liquid sprayer and use diesel for my heating needs. I've estimated it to be about 100 kW. I'll melt a kg or two in less than 3 minutes even without any insulation.

[Edited on 23-10-2020 by Junk_Enginerd]

Quote: Originally posted by Antiswat

one very interesting thing ive seen was first shown by youtuber "AvE" where he heats up toast bread in a sealed metal container with argon, the pyrolyzed product is some type of carbon thats super insulating, though very brittle, if we could find a way to crush this up and use as some type of granulate, maybe carefully stir that up with sodium silicate or soak up some sodium silicate solution with an excess of this carbon like powder? it has great potential.

Quote: Originally posted by Junk_Enginerd

Cast iron is more carbon steel than carbon steel is. It will quench harden even with extremely slow cooling rates. An annealing on the timescale of days is required to soften it. OP: You don't need fancy insulation for aluminum. I do a lot of diy metal casting. Just use ordinary wall insulation, the rockwool or glass fiber kind. It will keep most of its important properties up to 800°C or so. It does lose some structural properties in the 300°C range due to some polymerish binders being destroyed, but that just makes it a bit fragile and doesnt affect it as long as you don't try to rearrange it. The first heating will stink a little because of this(and most probably isn't healthy) so that's best suited to do outside, but it also only needs to be done once. That said, I gave up on electric heating a long time ago. You just can't get enough power to do anything meaningful in an acceptable amount of time. I use a dead simple air/liquid sprayer and use diesel for my heating needs. I've estimated it to be about 100 kW. I'll melt a kg or two in less than 3 minutes even without any insulation. [Edited on 23-10-2020 by Junk_Enginerd]