[ATM] A much belated update on various projects! Glass casting andother things.

["Thomas Janstrom" <thomas@moiler.com>]

Hi All,

Well as some of you might remember Early last year I embarked on a
journey that will ultimately lead to my being able to cast my own
cellular blanks. Well at this point I have finally been able to start
work on the kiln, not the one I REALLY wanted to build, but big enough
to prove the concept and hopefully enable the recovery of some of my
costs. Ok maybe not!

The kiln that I'm building will be able to house a mould large enough to
cast a 16.5" mirror blank, at present I have the refractory bricks and
mortar on hand, and over the next two weeks I will be taking delivery of
the heating elements, computer temperature control system, and ancillary
bits and pieces.

So all things being equal I should be able to cast my first trial blank,
a 10" pre-cored Cass blank (non-cellular) out of soda-lime glass. I will
be under taking this task in about three to four weeks time. A short
time to work out what worked (and what didn't!) and I should be ready to
have a try with Pyrex, probably using the same design etc.

Now for some other things, firstly my vacuum chamber/home aluminizer is
slowly nearing completion, my 8" DK bino-scope is on hold till the
coating rig is up and running as that's where I'm up to on that project.
I have various other things on the go, but this will do for now, I will
post some pics of the kiln project if there is any interest in seeing
what I'm up to;)

Cheers, Thomas.


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.4.1/312 - Release Date:
14/04/2006
 

_______________________________________________
ATM mailing list http://www.atmlist.net/