Kusti, my friend with the backyard furnace, is improving his system with an air intake pre-heater and a fan, and still intends to melt his own iron and cast his wheels all by himself, something which I do admire him for...
... since I myself took the easy way out, as you'll see below!
OK, let's go for some "assembly line" production - first, making frames for 5 sets of castings...
Here's how I'm going to get a driver, a bogie wheel, and two tender wheels from each pour.
Turning around the frame - this time, I didn't forget the risers and vents! I made them with pieces of round steel, with threads on the upper ends - then they could be easily removed from the packed sand with a small tapped tool I made.
A friendly foundry not too far from Helsinki promised to sell me iron in liquid form, an idea which certainly appealed to me! They promised me some floor space for a few hours, as long as I wouldn't interfere with their ordinary production work...
A lady working at the foundry was most concerned with how I would get my clothes clean afterwards - as you can see, I appeared for work clad in all white...
Here are the five finished sand molds (4 actually needed, one is a spare). They took me a little less than an hour apiece to assemble and pack with sand - all this of course interspersed with some friendly chatting with the foundry workers, who abound with information and advice! (... and the clothing, well, I'll let you in on the secret: they were actually discarded for use as rags, but resurrected one last time!)
The iron is transferred from the induction furnace into a smaller container suitable for pouring the molds.
Pouring the first mold...
Two hours later, the molds are cracked open, and what do we find: nice loco wheels in gray cast iron, still covered in sand, and too hot to handle! A little flash around the rims, but all the spokes are in place - a nice surprise! (Well, not really, with vents and 1500° C iron, I really DID expect nothing but success...)
When cooled, the wheels will be sandblasted by the foundry, to get a nice, clean surface. In a couple of days I'll pick them up...
Next installment of the 3003 story: Machining the wheels!
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