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I started the design by selecting a centrifuge from dental lab equipment that is capable of casting platinum. It looks like this:-

TC087

However the heating method by flame would not be adequate for the 2000DegC required so an induction method is required. The machine I initially chose is a Vevor 15kW Induction Heater LH-15A with the induction coil made of copper pipe cooled by an internal water flow because of the 600Amp current at 30 to 100kHz.. A utube video by a US blacksmith on this machine can be seen here. However the LH-15A turned out to not be available, so a planar transformer had to be designed from scratch. This design is shown here.

InductionHeater

The remaining design problem was rotating the heated crucible to vertical for the melt to enter the centrifuge. eventually I settled on moving the entire Induction heater backwards whilst simultaneously rotating the crucible through 90 degrees. Thus the heater is mounted on rails from a filing cabinet draw, and a lever system is used to rotate the crucible. Before this movement the hollow lost wax investment must be loaded into the centrifuge from the burnout furnace. There are three positions - open to load the hot burnout investment, heat with the induction heater around the crucible, and pour with the induction heater retracted and the crucible rotated through 90 degrees.

ThreePositionsHeatPosition

The three positions are shown here and next to it a close up picture of the heat position

Pour PositionQuickRelease

and in the pour position here (note that some of the sliding mechanism has been removed for clarity).In order to rorate the loading plate to the open position there is a quick release system based on the quick release bicycle seat mechanism. The brackets holding the crucible ceramic slide and crucible can split allowing the three position mechanism to move to the open position and allowing the loading plate to rotate out of the way. It can be seen above.

The complete casting sequence is shown in more detail here.




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