/diy/ - Do It Yourself

[Anonymous No.145827]

okay /diy/
i've been collecting can tabs, im planing on melting them down to make a small statue of my self holding one of the tabs, but first, how do i go about melting them cheap.

i was thinking of making a solar furnace using satellite dishes with mirrors on them to focus the light into a small point for melting, how does this sound?
or is there an easier way to go about melting can tabs

[Anonymous No.145833]

aluminum melts somewhere around 600-700 degrees iirc. Steel upwards of 1200 degrees.
So you can get a steel pot to hold the aluminum in it.
Then get a gas burner of some sort that will heat 600-800 degrees,

I highly doubt your solar furnace will produce enough heat to consistently melt the aluminum. You will have such a small area that you will get hot/cold spots and end up with a mess.

[SolarStar !aO5Mv7EC6. No.145835]

>>145827
Yes, you can do that. You'll need to make sure the tabs are black, so paint them if needed. A Fresnel lens would be easier to use, but not very /diy/, even though you can salvage a massive one from an old Rear Projection TV and build a special frame doth hold and align it. A parabolic mirror chip array would be cool.

Check out penny melting solar furnaces on youtube. Most use Fresnel lenses.

[SolarStar !aO5Mv7EC6. No.145841]

>>145833
>You will have such a small area that you will get hot/cold spots and end up with a mess.

On a small scale you are correct. This is why you'd need to build one with a focal point of about 3 inches max. using around 400 3 to 4 inch mirrors. I don't have the proper calculations on that, but that is an educated approximation. It also depends on the mass you are melting.

[Anonymous No.145843]

>>145833
this

You'll only be able to melt a handful at a time, since the most useful heating will happen at or near the focal point.

I believe most most people who melt their own aluminum heat crucibles with a propane burner.