Sunday, January 29, 2012

Experiments with aluminium bronze

Today I made some aluminium bronze, and it was a partial success I think.
I learnt a few things about the material, but I'm sure there's more to learn.

The first thing that I learnt is that it takes a surprisingly long time to melt copper; I was still trying after 20 minutes at full blast. Its melting point is 1084.62 degrees celsius, but either I couldn't get that hot, or there's some trick to melting copper. I got it to a very bright red-heat, but it wouldn't go any further.

So here's the lesson in that: according to The Complete Handbook of Sand Casting by C.W. Ammen, you should melt the copper first (p189), then add the other metals. I got fed up with w

aiting for the copper to melt, so I added my aluminium, which began to melt almost instantly, forming a puddle in the bottom of the crucible. Once this puddle had formed, the copper began to melt really quickly. If anyone can explain this, please do. Anyway, in future, I'll put copper in the bottom, aluminium on top, then more copper, then fire it up.
The second thing I learnt is that either aluminiun bronze is not nearly as golden as the internet would have me believe, or that it's a lot harder to get the ratios right than I thought. I aimed for 10% aluminium by weight, so I put 9 parts copper and 1 part aluminium in (2kg copper, 222g aluminium). One thing that leads me to believe that the ratio is hard to get right is that there was an awful lot of dross (or something that looked like dross) stuck in the bottom of the crucible after the pour. Thus, much of either or both metal oxidized. At what ratio, I can't say, but surely it is likely to skew my intended ratio.

In all honesty, I don't care about the colour, and the colour came out being pretty nice anyway. It looks almost like steel, only shinier. What I care about is the mechanical properties.



Here's an idea of the colour: the watch is stainless steel, the light has made everything a little yellower, though there are some patches about the place on other ingots that actually are that yellow. Also, notice how smooth the side is, and the two big flat bits on the top. The bumpy bits were loose bits of sand. This implies that I can get a pretty good finish with this alloy even with reasonably coarse sand.





The third thing I learnt is that aluminium bronze needs to cool slowly, otherwise it becomes very brittle. I quenched most of the ingots that I cast, with the result that I could break them by hand, or by dropping them from a height of about a metre. This had me worried, until I found an ingot I had forgotten to quench. I couldn't break it at all, I didn't try with a hammer though. In future, NO QUENCHING.

Here is a n ingot that I quenched, it was so brittle that I could snap it in my hand. It leaves a very sharp edge, I discovered the hard way. Notice how shiny the inside is? Also, you can see how it's quite crystalline. This has to be the result of the quenching, as the alloy ratio is almost certainly similar to the range of 'real' aluminium bronze, and I have one ingot, which wasn't quenched, which isn't brittle.

3 comments:

  1. This just in: I hit the 'non-brittle' ingot with a hammer, and it shattered comprehensively. As in, there were powdered bits...

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  2. Also, next time I will try fluxing with borax. I think what has happened with this attempt is that the copper oxidized too much, and that I didn't soak the melt long enough. I think the first thing, because the copper spent about 20 minutes being red hot, and the second thought is a result of the pile of crap in the bottom of the crucible.

    My plan is to toss everything back into the crucible and try again, getting hotter faster, fluxing, and soaking for a bit longer.

    Fingers crossed.

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  3. "A good formula is 90 to 95 per cent of aluminum and 5 to 10 per cent of copper"

    I just found this at http://chestofbooks.com/reference/Henley-s-20th-Century-Formulas-Recipes-Processes-Vol1/Aluminum-Bronze.html

    I'm not sure whether I should take this as a typo, or as a different alloy. I may just give it a shot though.

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