One of my co-workers experimented with Aluminum casting in his
basement while at university. I don't remember what his heat source
was (perhaps forced air plus propane? forced air over coal?) but he
once made the mistake of dumping molten aluminum into water. The water
instantly turned to steam and shot the still-molten aluminum past his
head and into the ceiling!

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 8:09 AM, RussellMc <apptechnz@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >I think I would promptly retire that PCB... it rather reminds me of one=
 that the factory manager had where I worked, from a car radio that fell in=
to the flow solder bath - came out fully encapsulated. I don't know how the=
y got it out, presumably they emptied the bath periodically.
>>
>> Pretty much anything will float on solder...
>
> A good idea =A0would be to NOT drop in anything that wouldn't float that
> had a core that "volatilised" at temperatures below solder melting
> point.
>
> I was shown around an aluminum manufacturing plant by a friend. Not a
> smelter - they took ingots from a smelter and
> cast/rolled/milled/melted ... them into other product.
>
> They had a largish induction furnace - 50 Hz mains was used to induce
> umpteen kiloWatts into a load of Al to be smelted. They recycled
> material using it. He said the trick was to always very very very
> carefully remove rubbish from incoming Al before melting. A bottle of
> water or softdrink could be lethal - carried into midst of scrap and
> buried and then Al is induction melted around it. Steam bomb :-(.
> Apparently people have died that way. A big enough solder bath should
> make a 'good' substitute for that.
>
>
> =A0Russell
>
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