# Arc melting Au with microwave oven transformers



## 924T (Aug 19, 2014)

Howdy, all!

I stumbled across this video on YouTube some time ago, and thought I'd put it up for 
2 reasons: your viewing and listening pleasure, and toward the end of the list of comments on YouTube,
someone mentions "submerged arc smelting", and I want to find out if any GRF members
have seen or dealt with that.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xcOCGAKaIc[/youtube]

Cheers,

Mike


----------



## butcher (Aug 19, 2014)

That video looks like a terrible way to melt gold, looks more like arc welding where you mix metals with each other and loose some to the metal to slag or oxidation of the metal, those flying sparks may be gold and other oxidized base metals, the gold looks much more impure than before it was melted.

Graphite carbon dish and a graphite carbon rod (posssible even with an inert gas), would serve better in this application, than a steel screw, and some type of metal dish.


----------



## Lou (Aug 19, 2014)

Heck, if you're going to do it all in graphite, just make a refractory lined bottle and resistively heat it (couple hundred amps at low volts will melt lots of gold quick!). One would do well to do it in an inert atmosphere, or at least blanket it in argon.


----------



## g_axelsson (Aug 19, 2014)

An novel way of creating "gold drops" to sell on ebay.

I think I prefer the old tested ways of torch melting.

Göran


----------



## resabed01 (Aug 19, 2014)

Surprised he didn't kill himself playing around like that


----------



## bswartzwelder (Aug 24, 2014)

Lou, back when I worked at Westinghouse, on a cold night, a cup of nice warm soup would really hit the spot. I would take a can of soup that didn't need water added and punch a hole in the top. Then place an electrode on top and underneath it. Crank up the power supply to about 600 amps and enjoy a hot cup of soup in a couple of minutes. As fast as a microwave which we didn't have.


----------

