Induction Furnace Request for Bids
Induction Furnace
You may have heard us talk about 'recasting civilization from scrap metal.' Refined metal can be mined in abundance from heaps upon heaps of industrial detritus in junkyards and fencerows. This will have to do until we can refine minerals directly and smelt them to pure metal.
I look forward to the day when our induction furnace chews up our broken tractors and cars from the paleoindustrial order and spits them out in fluid form. This will allow us to cast machine parts using molds printed by open source ceramic printers. We see the induction furnace, hot rolling, forging, casting, and other processes critical to the fabrication component of the GVCS.
Seeking Designers
We are looking for a consultant or developer to produce a design according to specifications below. We are offering between $100 and $3000 for a design, depending on its level of completion. This request will be posted on eLance and other outsourcing sites. If you are qualified to produce a design, please submit a bid by emailing opensourceecology at gmail dot com. We’re open to other suggestions on tactical and strategic aspects.
The bids will be judged on the demonstrated competence of the bidder, and upon the extent of design completion. The complete design would include all of the following:
- Design of an induction furnace circuit scalable up to 50 kW in units of 1 or 5 kW
- Design allows for power and frequency selection
- Power source may be either 1 or 3 phase electrical power.
- Specifications of a cooling or heat dissipation system
- Adaptable design specifications for primary coil windings
- Geometical design of melt chamber and basic power transfer calculations
- Melt chamber includes provisions for loading and pouring.
- Complete bill of materials
- Fabrication files for circuit and other components
- Sourcing information for components
- System design and process flow drawings
Naysayers on feasibility of this proposal will be either dismissed summarily, or our design criteria will be modified accordingly.
We have a $5k commitment to prototype an open source induction furnace. We are choosing to alot $3k for design work, as we believe that the remaining $2k would suffice for the furnace's physical components: about $1k for the electronics, and $1k for the furnace chamber.
The program for delivering an induction furnace involves a high frequency, high-power supply (between 20 and 50 kW (the latter can be gotten for $1600 on Ebay), and the melting chamber proper. Well, we could buy a turnkey system perhaps for $5k total used, and run it from the LifeTrac generator. The only disadvantage to this route is that if it breaks we’re dead-in-the-water – either with the impossibility of fixing closed-source technology, or a high repair bill. A single component which blows and is inaccessible for fixing could in principle turn a working power supply into worthless junk. Thus, it is worthwhile to tame this technology by open-sourcing the design.
It is more robust and cost effective to open-source the high power induction power supply. We would like to exactly this – which is mature technology.