the cruicible also has to be made of special refractories which are able to participate in the reactions to some extent, depending on the phosporus content of the initial melt and the desired qualities of the final product

Not to mention that if that were a bessermer converter he were leaning over, everything above his shoulders would be gone.

though that might be fun too . . . “build an arc furnace/bessemer converter at home, and get to play home mortician for free!”

whoaaaaHEY! You’ve gotta love these crazy maniacs that made these kind of suicide magazines, those where the days, aint?

haha!

This would work even better with an ac type arc welder home depot has one for 220 bux, however instead of building the device mentioned I would just use the transformer out of a large microwave oven known as a “MOT”and for this appliocation you want the tall transformers the little compact ones don’t work as well. The primary coil of a MOT has sufficient reactance to sustain a small arc furnace, or build an arc welder for that matter. I built a MOT arc welder years back, welded up a storm with it and gave it to my nefue, he uses it at his work, still to this very day, the point is MOTS are perfect for making arc devices. The key to using MOT’s is removing the high voltage winding with a hack saw, a hammer and a chisel. The high voltage winding is very dangerous, and must be removed without question. its easy to do without damaging the primary because MOT’s have a 3 volt filament winding and a stack of metal magnetic shunts
between the 2 coils that serves to protect the primary while are cutting and pinching the the secondary out also if the 3 volt coil becomes shorted just un-short it, only remove it if it can be removed without disturbing the shunts. I would sub-just for ultimate heat using both phases of your household wiring aka 220v, feed each hot leg into its own MOT transformer primary, before going to the carbons, this will impart quite a lot of energy into you arc furnace, at this point you will need a silicon carbide cursible to contain the molten remains of the Denver fire clay crucible (DFC ceramics: google) as pictured above. its worth noting that no one need to take app-art batteries most all welding shops stock copper clad carbon electrodes for the carbon arc cutting / welding process and the are available in a varity of sizes up top 1/2 inch , and are mend for arc processes, they ave very affordable even by kids on lunch money budgets, and fire clay crucibles are the same, in the less than $3 each range, and ofcourse dead microwave ovens are free at appliance repair shops if you ask nicely

What do shunts do?
the shunts serve to limit the current that can flow through the primary, dont remove the any of the shunts unless you want more power to your arc, and only remove them one thin strip at a time until the desired power level is reached. however i don’t recommend removing the shunts because the balance the current flow through the primary winding that you are using for ballast I would say that if you want more heat use the 2 MOT 220 Volt (2 opposing hot legs) method mentioned above will probably require plugging to a dryer outlet, unless your like mee and just wire directly to a split phase phase breaker straight from the mains pannel, its real easy, just hook the wires to the breaker then install the breaker (snaps right in) the set the breaker to the on posiation, most servace pannels have enough extra slots abvaible to plug another breaker in, as a power tap.

BTW if your breaker is on and the 2 mots don’t arc togather, you don’t have a split phase breaker, you have a single phase breaker with 2 trips.

Have fun and good luck, if i forgot anything just search MOT for the blanks

Ocean House

Handy for arc experiments, Popular Science 1933 HEAT so terrific that no known substance is able to withstand it for long can be developed in your home laboratory with nothing more than a pair of electric light carbons, a……