My old foreman in Cleveland swore by adding a half-percent more copper to the 356 mix for better fluidity.

I thought he was just being stubborn, but after a bad run of porosity last week, I tried it and the castings came out clean. Who else has a piece of old-school advice that actually holds up?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark_green24d ago

So what's the actual science behind that copper trick... does it change the surface tension or something?

ward.anna24d ago

I mean it could just be superstition lol. People get weirdly attached to random steps in a process.

richard_young8024d ago

That "old-school advice that actually holds up" thing is real. My buddy in a machine shop had an old timer tell him to always hand-scrape the first bit of a new bar stock before putting it in the lathe, said it took off the "skin". He thought it was nonsense until he skipped it once and had a terrible finish. Never argued again.