Entry #2Here's the long boring story part. If you want to actually see pictures scroll down:
Last week, I bought a welding inverter and an induction heater in China. (I'm using a welding inverter as a power supply because actual lab power supplies cost way too much, and the inverter only cost 27 dollars!) I'm back now, and I wanted to test out my induction heater to see if it can melt metal.
As you can see, it works pretty well:
At the moment, I can only melt aluminum (sorry, no copper bitcoins I guess) because I'm running the welder off 110v, not 220v, so it can't supply that much voltage to the induction heater. Once I figure out how to run my welder off the dryer plug, I probably can melt copper (maybe even steel).
I tried casting, but I didn't have any sand to use (and I didn't have a plastic model of a bitcoin). The best I was able to do was make a blob of aluminum, which wasn't too useful. Then I remembered that my crucible was actually circular, so I should be able to make a circular coin by just letting the aluminum sit in the crucible. So that's what I did.
Here's what I ended up with:
Next, I turned it into a coin shape by filing the aluminum. I spent about half an hour making the coin flat. Eventually I gave up on the top as it was really uneven, but the bottom was acceptably good.
Here's a video link of what my aluminum pancake looked like at this point:
https://streamable.com/fmp23.
Next, I tried to imprint a
BTC on my piece of aluminum. I first tried etching by printing out a
BTC, then cutting pieces of tape out to stick to the aluminum. However, the electrolyte quickly dissolved the adhesive on the tape, so that didn't work. Finally, I thought of another way, which was melting plastic onto the piece of aluminum so the plastic and aluminum would stick to each other, then using a knife to position the plastic so it formed a
BTC[end of boring story part]
Here's the final result:
Yes, I used glow in the dark plastic from an old toy because everything looks twice as good when it glows. There is a bit of brown stuff, that's probably because I heated it too much, but it shouldn't affect the end result. Anyways I drilled a hole through it so I guess you can wear it as a necklace or something. I'm going to try that sometime later because I have to leave soon. Will keep you updated.
I'm pretty sure all you experienced metalworkers are laughing at me now, so I'm going to show myself out.
Edit 1: Looks like it works pretty well. Video:
https://streamable.com/7p1t2BTC address: 3LGFCYRgpqsJXdUjvn5AHhvEetb726YrgL
Also, I might submit a third entry, which is going to be really exciting. That's all I'm going to say.
