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You're almost to the end of the waffle iron plates there Chris! But shouldn't your help there be wearing eye protection? At least the beer isn't open while he's operating the machinery! You'd have Elf-OSHA (ElfSHA?) all over you for that!Kim
Yes on the sand casting for the originals. Such large castings would be "floor" or "pit" mouldings, actually done in the sand / loam floor of the foundry. Wood pattern for lower half of casting would be rammed up deep in the floor, parting lines arranged as usual. The upper half of the mould was often rammed up in a large "floor flask" frame grid , the pattern pulled out, and the upper half mould turned over and placed on the lower half, using the crane. Lots of weight added to the mould's upper half to resist the buouancy of the iron. The casting would be poured from a big ladle handled by the crane, or in really big pours, direct from the cupola in floor channels to the mould. Some castings if a flat top was possible with no coring were poured "open" with no top mould, and sand thrown on top after initial solidification to stop chilling / hard spots. Locomotive cast frames were done this way in some cases. Floor moulding area of foundries was an extremely dangerous workplace. Putting your boot or hand down in the wrong place could be fatal or at least result in a catastrophic injury. I witnessed a few small and medium size floor pours with cast steel (thankfully with no safety related incidents at all) during a co-op at a steel making firm when I was a student. Not long afterward, that type/scale of large casting industry, iron or steel, pretty much disappeared in Ontario Canada. Lots of it still done in Korea and Taiwan I understand, for the ship engine / heavy equipment markets. Still several excellent foundries in Ontario doing smaller iron castings and non ferrous.
Yep, too nice outside to be inside all day. I was out at noon for a good walk. I'll have a troll around in yoot ube and see if anyone has posted any video of floor moulding / casting of big parts. I wouldn't think the icebreaker would be needed on the submarine pond, but any scale iceberg floaters? Hope the elves were sobered up and had no hangovers for their silent run. Hope you had fun with the RC boats.
Impressive milling on that plate...
Wonderful So many holes and so much swarf Is the tapping tool designed to be lubricated with Elfsteiner? I tend to use my little Proxxon bench drill as a tapping tool but I am usually working against the return spring.