The Shop > Metal Stuff

100Kw CFEI Induction Furness

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awemawson:
eskoilola's thread on building his induction furnace awakened my interest in this subject, and to my amazement I found that I still have pictures of my setup from 2006 when I was working on mine before we moved here 11 years ago.

Rather than hijack his thread I thought I'd post the pictures here.

. . . . maybe when / if I've finished the Beaver TC 20 CNC lathe this might be the next resurrection thread  :ddb:


The big blue box takes in 3 phase 415v AC power, and rectifies it and resonates a tank circuit, the coil of which is wrapped around the crucible, and the capacitor bank is in the box. The resonant frequency is determined by a microprocessor that pings the tank - measures the frequency then excites it at this frequency - the required frequency varies with the charge of metal in the pot

The 'furnace body' is remote from the driver and connected via 70 mm CSA cables that are threaded inside rubber 'brewers hose' that have water pumped down to prevent the cables melting (huge circulating currents involved). There is a separate chiller unit that keeps the water cool.

awemawson:
In fact I have two 'furnace bodies' - one is arranged to tilt to pour in a conventional manner, where as the other inverts - the mould being clamped to the top so the metal is never exposed to the atmosphere.

The pouring one I totally rebuilt and upgraded the tilting mechanism using 'air over hydraulic' control

It would be fun to get it all fixed up again sometime . . . . .

mattinker:
Great stuff Andrew, this was the project where I got to "know" you, please resurrect!!

All the best, Matthew

awemawson:
It is very tempting Matthew but there are things ahead of it on the 'round-tuit' list

eskoilola:
Ahhh....
I am rather surprised that I quessed correctly the setup of the heater coil in relation to the crucible. There is a reason why it sits on top of it instead of being casted as a part of the crucible. Thremal expansion of copper is quite a lot larger than that of the crucible material. Built this way the crucible will not crack as the coil can expand when it warms up.

Thanks for these pictures !

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