My homemade metal shaper is a tool for cutting metal from a work piece along a linear stroke. In addition to my home built metal lathe, I am using the shaper extensively as I build a horizontal milling machine. I also edited more extensive footage and discussion of the build in individual videos. There is…
My wife has been begging me to build her some furniture. I figured a C Table was a great place to start since it could be as a slide-under sofa table or an end table. Turns out it is a GREAT starter project for someone interested in furniture making with welding and woodworking aspirations. Design Does this qualifies…
I cleaned up the lost foam casting to mate the ram cap and ram for my Gingery Shaper. During this step of the project, I turned an arbor and used it to face the ram using my lathe. As you know, the ram facing is an operation that pushes the Gingery lathe’s capacity to its limit. I…
I use the lost foam casting method to create the ram for my Gingery Shaper. The first time the casting FAILED. But after remaking the pattern, using more sand, and packing the sand in I found SUCCESS! Thanks to a recommendation from Giaco Whatever and the support of Makercise patrons I now have a camera…
Your aluminum foundry operation should be efficient. Optimizing your feedstock pipeline is critical to profitable casting regardless the size of your foundry. Don’t let your process rob you of time or money. If you process scrap aluminum, you need to use the steps below to instantly improve your foundry’s efficiency. I go into detail below, but here are the…
As you know I started building a Gingery Shaper recently. In this part of the series, I use the lost foam casting method to create the column front. Then I add the vertical ways and assemble the column front. I now have the initial column assembly completed. Note that only two fasteners are used because…
I have started the Gingery shaper project. I am following the instructions in the The Metal Shaper book; however, I will be adapting it to metric dimensions and with metric hardware–at least for the most part. I also know of at least a couple other departures from the design in the book that I am…
In this log, I will discuss what I accomplished this week. I spent the majority of my time this week modeling the shaper. I also built an overhead hoist to help with molding particularly for the column side and other large molds. I edited and released a status update video. Finally, I cast the second of the…
Would you like to be able to melt aluminum anywhere? Well, I certainly do. I wanted to melt aluminum to demonstrate metal casting at Maker Faire Atlanta but did not have a feasible foundry in which to do so. My kiln would be too slow for regular demonstrations. My old kerosene foundry was languishing in…
Ever since my wife snagged a $10 kiln from a thrift store my aluminum has been much hotter than desirable when comes the time to pour. This is because with my kerosene fueled foundry, I had to constantly babysit it. There was no super heating of the aluminum because I was right there watching it….