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brigettecuneo
Good afternoon fellow casters. This new caster has a question, I’m hoping you can help.
I’m gathering together all my must have tools and necessary items for casting. For someone just starting as you know, it can be expensive at first. So with that in mind, I like to find stuff I have around the house first that I can modify and use for my needs. Perfect example is a toaster oven we had sitting still in the box from a previous holiday gift my girl never liked. It’s now my new powder coating oven.
brigettecuneo-
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danielmauck
As far as I understand the concept behind thise induction cooktops, they work on the Faraday Principle, which is why the pans you use on them must be magnetic. Iron moulds could work, however there is precious little magnetic metal in (or rather on) brass and aluminum moulds which suggests to me that they will recieve no heat. But I have been wrong before.
robertpedersen1
If it’s a true induction hot plate, then the burners won’t be useful for pre-heating molds.
If, however, it’s a hybrid hot plate that uses the induction coil to heat an iron disc above the induction coil, then it should work.If the top gets hot while the burner is on, then it should work. If not… let the wife keep them.
Hugh Kuhns
I use a coil hotplate with an old circular saw blade on top to even out the heat and prevent cold spots under the mould. Would this work for this also?
It should.
I do wonder, however, if the induction coil would be putting heat directly into the steel/iron core of the mold handles; whereas it’s normally only conductive heat from the mold blocks.
The induction hot plate we have are those ones from nuwave tv commercials. I was thinking if it did not heat by placing the mold directly on there, I also have a nice flat cast iron pan that could fit in there, then the molds.
I guess I have to read some more to find out for sure if I will not damage anything. Thank you again everyone for your help and thoughts.gwpercle
I know this flies in the face of modern casting wisdom….but you do not really “need” a hot plate to cast bullets. Lay the mould across the top of your melting pot to pre-heat. Cast a few bullets , these might be rejects, and cast untill you get tired.
The reason I know this is I’ve been casting since 1967 and…. I DO NOT have , nor have ever used a hot plate. NOE aluminum moulds heat up quite fast and hold the correct heat well. I usually pre-heat on top of the pot, make one cast , throw those back and all the rest are keepers
If you don’t have a hot plate , don’t fret, cast without one until you get funded or decide it’s not really needed.
Gary
micaelnetz
I have cast bullets for about 45 plus years and didn’t use a hotplate, thermometer, PID or any heating aid until the last several years. Now that I have a grasp on the melt temperature, the mold temperature and have a cadence set for the mould I am using it is easier to make bullets that are more consistent. The use of a thermometer in the casting pot was an immediate help, and a hotplate made more of a help in producing good bullets. And when I added a PID to the set-up it improved again. And last but not least I ordered a new NOE mould that was drilled for a temperature probe. By knowing the mould temp, and melt temp it made it easy to drop bullets from the mould at a very consistent temp resulting in bullets that were not only without visual flaws but were very consistent in weight. At least use a hotplate because if the mould is not up to temp it will cast bullets that, even if they look great, are not the same as ones that come from a hot mould. It doesn’t cost any more to make good bullets than ones that are nice looking rejects.
I have made thousands of bullets without these aids. And for many years I thought that that steel moulds were great…only because I didn’t know any better. I feel that this is the same. Just my two cents.
762sultan
AlvinYork
As far as 762sultan post goes – ditto. Except for the part about casting for 45 plus years.
The only other thing I would throw out there is that I think the temperatures, given in : Hints and Tips for casting with NOE Moulds, are a little high. If I run the pot that high the tin starts floating on the surface like a dead fish (although I like a lot of tin in my alloys). And when the mould nears 380 I start to get what I call “sandy sprue” where the sprue is not a nice piece of metal but more like one of those cubes that the aliens turned Capt. Kirk’s crew into; you can just crush it and it falls away like sand.
People probably already do this, but for the longest time I plugged my pot (Lee Production IV) into the pid with the temperature control set to the highest setting. It is the simplest thing in the world to just open up the column and remove the rheostat and wire the cord directly to the heating elements. This way the pid has absolute control of the heating elements without anything else “in the way”.
One interesting thing that Fryxell mentions in his book is that there is a lengthy plateau as the alloy cools. There are some charts he has which illustrate this quite nicely. This is important because the boolits you cast within that plateau will be withing a few tenths of a grain of each other. So it behooves you to get to your temperature and cast without disturbing the temperature of the alloy. What this comes down to is piling up your sprue rather than tossing it back into the pot immediately.
Ok, I guess that’s enough of a rant. Didn’t even get to “eutectic” and “precipitate” though . .I use the LEE Pro 4 20 bottom pour.
As I said I don’t know how accurate the thermometers really are. It may be difficult to compare results.
In this instance trying out the hot plate I was using 1:15 tin/lead (haven’t been able to smelt for some time, so all I’ve got right now).
Temp in the pot was about 750 *F. Also rather high as I gather from others posts, but that’s where it needed to be.
Full.Lead.Taco
If I preheat my molds on a hotplate, I usually get good bullets on the first cast. If not the first, then the second for sure. After I’ve emptied the pot and dump the sprue back in to remelt (as well as put in new metal to top the pot off), I put the mold on the hotplate to keep it warm while I wait for the lead to get back up to temp. I’ve found that once the lead is the right temp again, I can continue casting without a hitch. No need to toss any bullets on the first few casts. Yes, you can do it without it, but it sure makes things go smoother and faster. You can buy a cheap single burner hotplate for $15ish on amazon. That, to me, is well worth it.
danielmauck
robertpedersen1
Hugh Kuhns
micaelnetz
gwpercle
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