I'd love to have a kiln to do glass casting, enameling, pottery, etc... But they are super expensive
Can I make one myself? It's just a big resistor right? I think I can get an oven heating element for free, same with the power supply. Could I just encase the heating element in some bricks? Sorry if I am being a moron, I don't have experience here
tons of videos on youtube. you could have just searched for it with far less words and moronation than it took to make this post.
so go watch your how-to, build your little gay oven, and cram yourself into it you gay fricking homo.
fpbp
literally a heating element and fire bricks, fricking have a nice day.
You have to be careful with the wire because the oven will always be cooler than the wire. Just because the oven is cooler than the wire doesnt mean the wire isnt going to melt.
Also as the oven heats up the wire will have a harder time cooling off by the oven air, you need to find some calibration tables of wire resistance vs temperature and to make some electronics that can measure this resistance on a live wire and adjust the current to reach some desired goal of wire temperature
I also considered making an oven using bonded sand as a material.
Yeah, it's "easy". Knife makers do it all the time, just make the resistor wires easy to change because they don't live long at full blast.
>It's just a big resistor right? I think I can get an oven heating element for free, same with the power supply.
The wire in kilns is a special high temperature alloy called nichrome. You want that stuff, not a stove element, which probably won't survive those temperatures. Other than that, yeah it's pretty straightforward. You can use firebricks from the hardware store or get special refractory cement.
You can buy nicrome wire, Pyrometer, programmable temp device and firebrick. It's a very simple device
Hunt for used kilns. Hobbyists tend to sell stuff off after they give up and you can score deals. Fecesbook Marketplace is a good source of stuff.
Look on facebook marketplace, some people give them away for free
I've got one.
Dad bought it and we installed a 240V outlet and get got a pottery wheel.
Hasn't touched it since.
you should make something
make some gifts
I got this one for about $500. The programmable thermostat works great for heat treating and tempering. Nichrome wire, fire bricks and controls are cheap but assembling it in a useful form is worth the money.
I was thinking of doing this soon, the filaments in a toaster is usually nichrome wire. Get fireblock that can actually take the heat (the ceramic stuff I believe, obviously not fiberglass that'll melt). Maybe you can repurpose the toaster's electronics to pwm the power to get rough control? Thermocouple for reading the actual temperature wouldn't hurt, either, but you may be able to get a rough approximation by reading the current through it (and potentially the color of the wires). Probably safer/"better" to use a thermocouple or both, though.
Probably could be done simply for <$100
Test post, do not reply to this post.
I replied B)
Is it more worth it to do electric resistive or induction for smelting?
also google how to make a microwave kiln, it's surprisingly simple.
professional foundries use induction for melting (not smelting). Its the cleaner option, it can be used for melting copper for wire which is highly reactive and tends to oxidize too much when it gets melt in any other way, impure copper has a higher resistivity
Induction installations are bretty rare IIRC. Mostly primary production is blast I think and most secondary recycling has moved to arc furnaces. Arcs have very favorable ROI on smaller setups
OP, eschew the heating wire, just make a hole in the bottom and stick a propane torch. Get a temperature sensor to lower/up the heat