On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 15:39:14 +0100, "sme"
wrote:
That's great Steve. It sounds like this would be a great setup for
case hardening and tempering home made tools. I have a tig welder and
could use the argon to shield the part during heating and so avoid
tool wraps, flux, etc..
Eric
Eric, thanks for the encouragement.

Currently the system can heat 20mm tool steel to yellow / white in about six
seconds.
I am currently working on the cooling aspect using a closed loop water
supply that flows around the work coil.
The system is running at approx. a third of full power so melting of steel
should be achievable.
Additional testing and fine tuning of variable frequency is also in the
process.
All circuitry is solid state and is currently cooled by standard PC fans
which will eventually make the unit very compact and transportable.

The circuit boards where designed using Eagle PCB then cut on a CNC Denford
Starmill (1988) that I was lucky to find going for a song. Incidentally I
managed to convert this mill to run on Linux EMC patched into its original
L297 / L298 stepper drivers. The original control circuit could only hold
approx 32kb of info so this is now bypassed.

This has been a part time project with many trips to the library and
countless hours rambling the web for as much info on induction as possible.
Hopefully soon it will all payoff.... ;-)

Regards
Steve.

"Eric R Snow" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 2 Jun 2004 13:48:38 +0100, "sme"
wrote:

Dear Group,

I am posting this message in an attempt to gauge interest for a project I
have been working on.
I have been a hobbyist of metalworking for some time and currently posses
a
lathe and CNC milling machine which I enjoy the use of very much.
I have also cast metal using traditional foundry methods (gas / charcoal)
and this is what seeded my interest for this project.

I have designed an induction furnace which is currently in it's testing
stage.
Initially this furnace was not going to see light of day out side of my
own
workshop but while demonstrating it to a friend he showed a great deal of
interest and mentioned that many like minded hobbyists may be interested
in
such a device.

So I guess I am posting this to gauge interest from the group and seek
advice to what value both from usage and monetary you would put on it.

I would like to apologise in advance if members of this group see this
post
as a form of spam. Please be assured that this is not my intention.
I agree it would be nice to make a little cash out of ones hobby and give
up
the office job ;-)

Regards,
Steve.

Greetings Steve,
By all means you should post any info you can. There has been much
interest in induction furnaces expressed in this group.
Cheers,
Eric