Has anyone cast an enclosure?

[rousejeremy]

I occasionally buy old Fuzz Faces when they pop up for cheap just because I love to rehouse them with good stuff but wish I could just buy them. Or maybe make them.
Has anyone made a box from melting down old pop cans or anything?

[imJonWain]

The closest I've done was aluminum sand casting in college but we had a foundry space to do it in.  It's fairly involved but certainly not difficult. 

[Phend]

We cast aluminum parts in high school shop class.
Had a graphite crucible in a propane pot type furnace.
Used a 2 piece foundry box that we pounded foundry sand around the wood patterns we made.
Fun, we made all sorts of stuff some of which we machined.

[Fancy Lime]

If you cast your own, you can go real vintage and make bronze enclosures for fuzz faces. Just a thought...

[Ben N]

Let he who is without germanium cast the first enclosure. Or something.

There are a bunch of videos on Youtube about melting and casting scrap aluminum, but I don't recall anything as complex as an enclosure--mostly ingots and such. I suppose you could cast it as a solid disk, and then machine it out on a lathe, if you have access to both a foundry & a lathe.

[dennism]

I think the old Wyllie Moonrock enclosures were individually hand cast by the builder.   And to this day make a fairly ordinary fuzz circuit into legendary status.

[mmessmore]

I definitely wandered down a research hole considering it using scrap aluminum.  Just wanted to make something with an interesting shape.

From what I could tell, it's doable and not ridiculously expensive.  You do need space to safely melt and cast the metal, and it's pretty labor intensive.  I think you'd probably want to cast ingots first and get rid of all the slag from your source material, especially if you're using cans and such. Then you'd repeat sand casting, sawing, and filing.

It is a little tricky to do a hollow box and there's a lot of limitations on the shape. Machining or a combination of the two is much more flexible, but has a much higher financial barrier to entry.

I ended up deciding to keep using the same old hammond boxes, and spend my new tool money on woodworking.  Dreaming of working my way to making guitars, but starting small and learning hand tool technique.

[ElectricDruid]

Casting aluminium isn't very difficult, at least at a basic level. My brother and I managed it when we were kids, so it can't be too hard. We built a little furnace with loose bricks, and we had an old cast-iron sauce pan that we improvised a long handle for. We put scrap metal in the pan, then got a good fire going in the furnace, put the pan in and waited. If we got the fire hot enough, we could screw the handle back into the pan and pull the glowing pan out and pour the liquid metal into some mould or other. We only had builder's sand not casting sand, so we were pretty limited, but it wasn't a bad effort for a couple of kids!

[anotherjim]

I was always warned that casting sand must be absolutely bone dry. Any damp in there and when the hot metal goes in the water rapidly boils and spits hot molten metal around. Be careful!

[PRR]

...We only had builder's sand not casting sand....

IIRC, add molasses.

There's lots of magic ingredients in the best casting sands, but molasses is sufficient and is probably in Mom's kitchen.

Again, IIRC, the sand/binder has to be a wee bit damp to mold, but be baked thoroughly (12 hours?) before casting.

In my youth we went down to a local foundry and begged a bag of sand (no charge) but foundries are rare in the US today. I may know one "near here"; actually a boat propeller repair/custom shop. The lobstermen will pay well for a prop which gets them out to the pots and back before squalls hit; they also work around rocks a lot so repairs happen.

[Phend]

The sand we used sticks together maybe had oil or some other binder.
Just looked for foundry sand on amazon.
There are quite a few types plus you can get a kit for 150. Usd.
Interesting.

[Dormammu]

The box can be bent from 0.7-2mm thick steel sheet. A couple of times I did it to order, with fastening with rivets or
TIG welding.
Perhaps MIG-welding can do it, but I don't know how beautiful the seam will be.

[Phend]

Aluminum channel  McMaster
You complete the ends and bottom
Cut to length of course unless ya want an extra long effect
Other sizes available

[isobar]

I have recently built a little foundry for this sort of thing. I will definitely give it a try. Cast metal has a really nice look about it. Quite an involved subject actually. I imagine recreating some of the early enclosures like the original fuzz faces by Roger Mayer would be good fun.

Chris.

[isobar]

One more point about this is that most of the enclosures are die cast. This is quite different to sand casting. Die casting is done by injecting the metal into a die  under great pressure. And I think the metal may be a zinc alloy. Not straight aluminum. Die casting gives a much closer tolerance and can be we'll suited to mass production. I think all the Hammond enclosures we use are die cast. Sort of like injection moulding with plastics. 

Chris

[printer2]

I only did some casting in shop classes a lifetime ago. My brother is dabbling into casting and looks out for cast zinc or aluminum pieces as they are the right alloy for casting. The alloys help with the flowing of the melted metal. Just something to keep in mind.

[glops]

There's a builder in Indonesia who has cast a bunch of his offerings. He had posted a pic of a Roland Phase II he had acquired and I told him he should do that one and he did like a month later, really cool:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ1wjROvo_5/

A couple of years ago he had posted the casting process but couldn't find it, really cool to watch.

And pricy but fuzz cases has fuzz face blanks and lots of other cool enclosures:

https://fuzzcases.com/product-category/fuzz-case/

[Paul Marossy]

There's a builder in Indonesia who has cast a bunch of his offerings. He had posted a pic of a Roland Phase II he had acquired and I told him he should do that one and he did like a month later, really cool:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ1wjROvo_5/

A couple of years ago he had posted the casting process but couldn't find it, really cool to watch.

And pricy but fuzz cases has fuzz face blanks and lots of other cool enclosures:

https://fuzzcases.com/product-category/fuzz-case/

Wow! That's some pretty nice stuff.

[mozz]

Nice selection, little bit steep on prices to ship to US.

[rousejeremy]

There's a builder in Indonesia who has cast a bunch of his offerings. He had posted a pic of a Roland Phase II he had acquired and I told him he should do that one and he did like a month later, really cool:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ1wjROvo_5/

A couple of years ago he had posted the casting process but couldn't find it, really cool to watch.

And pricy but fuzz cases has fuzz face blanks and lots of other cool enclosures:

https://fuzzcases.com/product-category/fuzz-case/

Those are great. Thanks for the link.