Here is a bunch of used motor oil that was given to me by an auto mechanic who works out of his home. He found out that I have a waste oil burner and is more than happy to give me his used oil and avoid paying to dispose of it. The guy even delivers it to me! You know you’re a metalcasting "pimp" when people bring the fuel to you!
Here is one days haul of WVO (waste vegetable oil) from a small local fried food joint. The restaurant is very small with a kitchen the size of a kitchen found in a typical house. But I ended up getting about 15 gallons of oil per month from them. The four jugs in the back are empty but good for later collections. At the time 15 gallons/month was an overload because the technology was still very crude and caused a lot of problems. But now I could burn 5 gallons a week easily if I want to do a lot of aluminum casting. Regularly casting brass, bronze or iron can easily double that figure. In the green bucket are my collection tools. The most important of which is the manually cranked oil pump.
Here is a venturi that I cast in aluminum using a two piece wood pattern. This venturi is inserted into the air pipe of the intake manifold.
Here is the venturi installed in the intake manifold. Notice how the oil drip pipe enters into it. It is interesting to note that the intake manifold's air pipe on the G4 burner was made from 1-1/4" steel pipe and did not require a venturi. On the G5 burner manifold the air pipe was changed to a 2" steel pipe and the venturi is neccesary.
This photo is of making the fuel line connection. I use 1/4" copper tubing for the fuel line. And to ensure no oil leaks I use a double flared connection. I bought the double flaring tool from JC Whitney. It's actually just an extra piece that is used with the regular flaring tool.
Here's a look at the foundry furnace unit with the G5 newly inserted and the G4 nearby it on the ground.
Here is the G5 burner in use. This unit looks like a mass of pipes and bars but it's simpler than it may appear, the photo is just cluttered. I didn't have a proper blower mount at this stage. The blower is simply resting on a 4" X 4" block of wood. I didn't design a new blower mount because I knew how often I change the burner design. Of course this entire foundry unit will eventually be ditched for a completely re-designed one.
This is my homemade miniature charcoal ignitor. It's just a small version of the store bought ones used to ignite charcoal for a barbecue. This one is for igniting one or two pieces of charcoal, which I use to ignite my oil burner. Crumpled newspaper is stuffed into the bottom and ignited. The charcoal sits on a wire grid just above the newspaper and is ignited by the direct flames. Here I'm actually using some hardwood charcoal left over from my mini-cupola fiasco.
Here is a bunch of wood pieces. It's hardwood, mainly oak and maple. I load the burner with 8 or so of these pieces and drop the burning charcoal in on top of it. I turn the blower on and the wood ignites almost instantly. A minute or two later the burner is hot and I open the oil line valve. A big flame bursts forth... It's an easy way to ignite the burner and the wood can be spilt into thin strips then cut to size very rapidly. I've even tried scrap lumber split and cut to size. Plywood scrap is somewhat decent but since most lumber is pine it burns away too quickly. Hardwood like the blocks shown is by far the best.
An evolutionary leap... After seeing the success of Colin Peck's waste oil burner I decided that the "box burner" design that I have been working on was the wrong way to go. There are too many problems to resolve with the style. So I discontinued that design and developed my own "injection" style burner which I call the G6-IS1 (Generation 6 Injection Style 1) and it gets busy! Go to the next page or the previous page.