Valentines Day - Aluminum Heart Chain

In this Ible I will provide a short summery of a cool project for Valentines day, metal casting is one of many hobbies that I have and when I do have some spare time I like to cast some aluminum objects. In the next steps I will briefly explain how I created an aluminum heart chain using recycled scrap aluminum.

This is the first time I tried to use the lost foam casting process usually I use the traditional sand casting process, basically the main part is taking Styrofoam placing it in casting sand and pouring molten aluminum over it...well more or less ;-).

The molten aluminum vaporizes the Styrofoam and the molten aluminum fills the shape of the previews Styrofoam. I decided to use foam hearts for this project linking them together into a heart chain.

To connect all the foam hearts I used ordinary craft sticky glue and it worked very well. For the fist casting I used Green sand oppose to oil bonded sand.

Step 1:

To be honest I didn't invest much in the first lost foam casting attempt and the results speaks for themselves with massive casting defects, so I decided to try again and this time to use oil bonded sand.

Step 2:

I created a new Styrofoam hearts chain and this time combined donuts Styrofoam links between the hearts, the links where a bit tight but I took into consideration that they might fuse with the hearts. For the sand casting I used Oil bonded sand that is much easier to use and mold around the the Styrofoam hearts.

Once all the hearts where in place in the sand I glued the sprues where the molten aluminum was poured into. I was not sure if this casting would turn out but I had no doubt that it will be more successful the the first attempt. And it was indeed!!

Step 3:

I opened the sand flask and carefully released the solid casting from the sand and there I revealed a really nice aluminum heart chain coming out of the smoke ;-)

The aluminum casting turned out very well and I was extremely happy with my 2nd ever lost foam casting attempt. Now the next step was cutting the sprues and cleaning the extra aluminum.

Step 4:

To cut the extra sprues I used my electric reciprocating saw, its quick and effortless. After cutting the extra aluminum I gave it a final clean with an angle grinder and aluminum discs scaling the grits.

* On the safety side I do recommend to use high grade face mask during the aluminum pouring process and during the aluminum cleaning part.

Step 5:

In the next images you can see the end results of my first aluminum heart chain, great gift for Valentines Day made from recycled scrap aluminum.