Desktop Foundry [MakerID-6]

Our finished foundry, and its product, a small heart.

Desktop Foundry

                     Julian Rhoads and Sara Hartman

Our project was a desktop metal foundry. We had both wanted to work with metal, and make figurines using metal, and Ms. Mytko showed us this article on MakeZine so we decided to make the little metal foundry. Our objective was to build a working foundry that melted field’s metal. (Field’s metal melts at 144 ℉ , so it would melt under an open alcohol burner.) All in all, I think we succeeded. In the article we were using, it said to use many pieces that included dowels. The dowels we had in the classroom were either too short or too thin. We had to really engage ourselves with this problem, because we thought that we couldn’t use these dowels. We decided that  instead of ordering more, we would use the ones we had. We glued two of the short dowels together. They were actually some form of clothespin, but we thought they might work. When we put them up, we thought that it wouldn’t hold, but it did! I think that it’s one of the best parts of our project. We encountered some difficulties along the way, and we thought that we weren’t going to finish on time. For example, acquiring the wood for the base. The article said that they used 2” by 2” wood, so we decided to double that to 4” by 4”. Later in the article it said 7” by 7” base, so we were pretty confused by the dimensions. We needed a larger piece of wood than the one we had cut, so we improvised and went with an old piece of wood a different make faire project had used. I think what we learned from this project was how to improvise. We used the materials we had, and learned to make changes as we went along. Our goal wasn’t necessarily to make it look pretty, it was to make it functional. But, if you have the time, you can make it pretty. That’s what we would’ve done if we’d had more time. Just a hint for people trying to do this project, don’t look for the exact parts in the article. The materials on the article are rather specific, and they don’t need to be. We used clothespins instead of dowels and they worked fine. So don’t get too caught up in the materials list. Cost can be a problem however. Because we used materials we already had, we didn’t spend much money, but if you were to buy everything online or at an art store, it would be about $61. The alcohol burner alone costs around $17, but Ms. Mytko had one in her room, so the only thing we needed to buy was a small vial of field’s metal. Field's metal happens to be quite expensive. The small vial was $30 in itself. If you wanted to make a desktop foundry, you could probably find substitutes for the actual materials in your own house instead of wasting 60 bucks on stuff you might have.

The article we used: Desktop Foundry (Again however, it was pretty confusing)