So how's its going? Mine has been put on hold for a bit as I'm flat out finally enjoying the camping with the family.. Kallen Westbrook Owner of Westy's Accessories

Haven' t had time for mine mainly apart from the fact the inclination isn't there atm either. 
​Hot enough of late, Playing with mega burners is definitely a winter sport rather than a summer one.

 What spare time I have had I have been setting up and playing with my Vintage lister type Diesel engine. 
Tha'ts been pretty fun setting up a couple of car alternators running through inverters and I'm now setting it up with a 3 Phase motor I'm using as a generator. 

I'll go back to the Burners when It's cooler outside and I want something to keep me warm.

I did put up another burner with a decent blower heating up a drum of veg oil at my mates place for Bio making. 
We were able to boil about 180L of oil in 17 Minutes. 

 

Well I've got my plasma cutter now so no more hole saws.. Hope to have my shed heater done this week.. temps here went from 40 to 16 overnight.. now I'm cold with no heater... Kallen Westbrook Owner of Westy's Accessories

Make two, send one to the admin :-)

Make two, send one to the admin :-)

I'm still working on your sliders.. Kallen Westbrook Owner of Westy's Accessories

Well it's been a while but I recently built the scariest burner of all so far. 

It's doing 300Kw which isn't a huge leap from the smaller one in output but it is when your standing next to the barstard! The elbow on the top of the Burner is 4" and it's full of fast moving flame. 
I think this one could go possibly as high as 500KW but I have maxed out the air on the industrial blower.  I made the intake 2" for better airflow and the blower gets the air in at much lower pressure than with the little one. If I could supply more air, then I could also introduce more fuel and get more heat. 

 

The thing sure sucks down the Fuel! I use 25L transparent square drums and while you can't quite see the fuel going down, you can sure see the difference in 5 min!  It takes a lot of feeding compared to the others.  I had about 150L of crappy Veg oil I set aside earlier in the year for burner fuel because I couldn't be bothered cleaning it up for use in the truck.  I sure got through that fast with this thing.  Few good play/ melt sessions and it was gone. 

The 300Kw burner is awesome.  I threw an alternator in front of the thing when it wasn't near flat out and the thing melted all the aluminium off from a cold start in 2.5 min.  I pulled the rotor off the plate that it was sitting on in front of the flame and that Kilo or so of steel was glowing red hot.  The copper windings didn't fuse though which surprised me but the thing was too hot to touch for 30 min. 

I completely melted a manifold almost as fast as I could push it into the flame once it the first bit melted.  Being long and with long branch runners I couldn't get the flame over more than and end at a time but once the end melted which took about 15 sec, as fast as I could more the rest of it into the flame it was gone.  I had the thing turned up pretty well at that stage and after the holocaust the next day, I realised that there had been a heap of Molten ally sprayed all down the driveway on the concrete. I thought the amount of ally that I got from the manifold was a lot less than I thought. 

I picked up a couple of cup fulls in sprayed/ powder off the drive which I remelted again and it was definitely ally not dirt. Bit too much thrust there. 

 

I have to concede, I don't see the 1000Kw job becoming a reality any time soon. To get enough air you would have to probably go to a really substantial blower. I'm thinking 3 phase or petrol driven. The inlet would have to be 4" minimum I reckon. The outlet would probably have to be around 6" to allow for the gas expansion and to keep the back pressure reasonable.  Fuel feed might need to be 1/2" because I'm using 3/8 now and that sure as hell isn't going to be enough unless you feed that in at 10 or more PSI. 
It would be a scary bugger of a thing to run flat out that's for sure. That said, I have a suitable  sized tank sitting at the ready If I do decide to do the Frankenberger. 

 

 

I'm thinking I might get a couple of alloy heads off one of the old engines that come back into the yard when they buy a used one And do a vid on melting those. I can't see them lasting more than 5 min.

 The engines get stripped for some parts and sensors mainly so everything to get to the heads is already off bar the rocker covers. I was seriously looking at melting the whole engines . I thought I could load them into a 44 and stick the burner into that which would help concentrate the heat like an oven and If I had them on an angle, I could run the molten ally out the bung hole.  From there I could just pull the steel out the next day. 

I went to the scrappys the other week and the price of metal is nothing atm. I think I saw ally at 30 or 50C a Kilo.  Not worth the effort even for fun. 

It was heaps higher before and made an engine worth something but atm may as well just sell them as Dirty ally with the things intact and be done with it. 

Did you get to doing anything with your shed heaters westy?

 

Bloody hell.. You know I was thinking about this just this week..

And in short, no..

I have stripped the patrol so that is taking all spare time and cash atm..

I did get hold of a vac but will look around for a blower like yours as they are a lot quieter..

I've got the base of the heater finished, all I really have to do is cut and plum the flue in..

But yours.. Bloody hell.. Sweet..

Kallen Westbrook

Owner of

Westy's Accessories

Heres a Vid of the baby in action going to work on an old alternator I was going to take to scrap. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS47JZl--Qs

 

I'm half Inclined to take the thing up the wrecking yard when I visit in a couple of weeks and try it on an engine just for chits and giggles.  I reckon I could knock one over in 30 Min without much problem. 
Might have to set it up on some wire to let the ally drip through and catch the steel bits. Might even make an interesting bit of wall art for the workshop. 

 

Double upload

 

Edited October 11, 201312 yr by Glort