Aluminum Recycling

User tip#1

• Collect your cans, the more the better

• Cut the tops and bottoms off. For instance use shears or scissors. You want to seperate the cans into 3 sections. The tops, sides, and bottoms. The side when cut, looks like a thin single sheet.

• Drop them all into boiling water and boil for a few minutes. This helps by cleaning and removing any varnish and soda left in the can. It also helps by removing/washing any sand/dust that tends to collect in a can left laying around or "donated". Let air dry.

• The bottoms have the most metal and can be stacked one on top of each other. Like the fake potato chips that come in a can.

This reduces the surface area quite a bit. When it begins to melt, the bottom forms a pool that gravity pulls the stack into the melt pool. Your dross will be minimal. I have used no flux, borax, wood ash, charcoal ash, pure carbon from a oxy/acety torch, etc as covers.

When I started I made my own flux from Borax brand melted in a crucible till it goes 'glassy' and then crushing it. It was easier to buy some from a supplier later.

• Now take a washed side and roll it into a tight cylinder, then add another, etc until you have a nice thick solid roll of sides and tie off with aluminum wire to keep it together. Add that to the melt.

• I don't usually bother with the tops, other than submerging them one at a time until they melt. It's usually too time consuming.

• Nice clean skin with very little dross and I get about 75-80 percent conversion into ingots.

I use old quart cast iron pots as crucibles. The one with lids can be drilled to make pouring easy, and they skim the pour very nicely.