r/Metalfoundry

I had a lot of time to work on my copper this weekend. I managed to melt and pour about 20 pounds wort of new ingots, a few different sizes this time. I think I have a good system for pouring the copper now, and a more level surface. They are coming out more even. After cleaning them up, I put the laser to work around the clock! The bigger ones took about 20 hours each to engrave and the smaller ones about 10 hours. My phone's camera is really crappy, they look much better in person. One of these days I'll get a new one. What do you all think of these ones?

Copper bottom private mint in progress. I run scrap for my dad's electrical business. I'm usually managing about 30,000 lbs of copper for him a year. This year, I've shifted into turning it into bullion bars.

I've got my first 50 9lb bars made, and my first design laser is engraved. I've got another 200-300 bars worth of copper I'm sitting on, but I can't sell to big wholesalers like jm, hero, etc. so here I am asking for help on how to get started as a certified mint and how to go about getting rid of 100+ bars at a time.

I'm having them professionally cast at a local foundry here in the USA. they will be stamped and / or laser engraved, with a brushed, mirrored, or glossed finish.

Tell me what you think. What designs would you like to see. Is anyone interested in custom 9lb bars? What sizes are best, or your favorite?

An engineer needs a custom part and defaults to a shop interstate or a vendor outside the U.S. based on a trade show connection. But there are local shops that could do this where fixing problems is a 30-minute drive away.
Seeing this from the shop side? I'm running a short survey (under 3 min) on how buyer-seller connections have changed - you can be anonymous, or I'll share the findings if you leave your details at the end of the survey: https://tally.so/r/VLoBVM

These are the results of my first aluminum melt! 2 100oz bats. I'm excited to get into casting. I bought a used single burner furnace from a yard sale for 20 bucks along with 2 crucubles. One was filled with crap that didn't melt even when the crucible was nearly white hot. After it cooled there's some red crystals forming along the edges. I think that crucible is a lost cause for now. Luckily the bigger one was mostly clean and I was able to use it!

hi all! I'm shopping around for beginner kits and seeing a lot of different recommendations, any reviews for this vevor one? I'm brand new to metal casting, done some soldering before though. I'm a designer and i'm developing some custom metal details for my pieces (think buttons, buckles etc), i was originally planning to outsource to a professional metal caster for this but it's out of my budget (unless anyone has recommendations- i'm doing a spikey chain link/o-ring situation in 2 sizes, absolute max I can afford is $500 for molds + casting). I'd really rather learn the skill myself though. Any recommendations for learning resources too would be much appreciated!