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kimp

Microwaves may be a much easier process by which to extract metals from ore, and to melt metals materials such as metals or ceramics.

Most people are of the opinion that they cannot place metal in the microwave. This is not true. Microwave processing of Alloys has been used at Oak Ridge National Labs for over a decade, for use in alloy processing for nuclear war heads.

It is true that placing a metal directly in the microwave with nothing but the metal will result in arcing if using a standard microwave. However by simply covering the material with a susceptor this can be avoided.

A susceptor is a material which couples and absorbs the microwave energy converting it to heat.

Some materials couple at room temperature and some at elevated temperatures.

SiC (Silicon Carbide) is a good susceptor and it couples at room temperature and is good up to about 1100C. Alternatives are Magnetite, and Zirconium.

Insulating the walls of the microwave from the susceptor with a high temp refractory provides for the microwave energy to be directly absorbed by the susceptor you choose. You could use a standard graphite crucible for metal melting and pour into a lost wax type mold.

You could also take several magentrons out of standard microwaves and couples them together in a vacuum tight container, and add a vacuum pump, and refrigeration loop for the insulated walls, to create a metallurgy lab which can melt 100lbs of iron in minutes.

Not only can this be used for metals, but ceramics such as SiC can be sintered.

This is less expensive than an induction furnace because the parts are everywhere for microwaves, and provides many features which are not available when using an induction heater. For instance you use Black SiC (Silicon Carbide) such as used in grinding and you sinter it to make a mold cavity for extruded metal pipe, and you dust it with graphite. Then you use the device to melt the alloy for the pipe. You could use a piston pump made of sintered SiC to pump the molten metal for the extrusion. NO oxidation because you can do it either under an inert atmosphere or vacuum.

I will add more information later today. Just wanted to quickly put this out there.

I will put some cad drawing as examples and put them in sketch-up format.

Sketch-up because its free and anyone can download and see the files, and yes even though sketch-up is not officially supported on linux it can be run on linux.

I will also provide some recipe's for refractory, and susceptors. Please do not use the same microwave with which you will use to cook food for this.

You could poison yourself.

Metz

I experimented with microwave curing of clay into ceramic several years ago. I got the idea after reading about microwave sintering.

We can also use a simple clay pot, fan and charcoal to cast metal.

I have several books on backyard foundry building. I am more into CNC than casting, however I plan on experimenting with it in the future.

ChuckH

We should look into electroslag remelting. See wiki at http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Foundry#electroslag_furnace .

Jason

kimp, any more information can add would be great. Even better, if you could make this into a wiki page, that would be wonderful.

nottern

good info, i've never heard of this. but i'm curious, how much time should the exposure last to obtain high enough temperatures?... and then, how much energy should you consume in the process?

morphtrust

This seems to me to be a possible short cut to reduce power consumption for making solar cells. finally cells will produce more power over their life span than it took to make them !! good job, I am going to seriously take a stab and setting something like this up. I have some previous experience with modding microwave ovens already so it should be a snap, other than the refractory materials :D we definitely need a good how-to on making your own refinery bricks. I have been taking stock on where all the zeolites and other naturally occurring resources like this are located, and that is also something we should possibly look at is a map of such things and start a buying plan for the land it is on, get it (the land and resources) into this organization.

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