Worst case scenario is you will have your own righteous foundry furnace. Maybe a cast iron guitar. lmao. 
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I will be playing with that with my other company. Funding is tight so I can’t afford the equipment yet. But I will be playing with 3D printed lost invesment casting soon. Plus Ill be getting the equipment for Carbon Fiber cloth lamination and developing a Lexan forming machine for DIY’ers
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This dude cast one out of bronze. It wieghs like 50 lbs!! He sais in the video it cuts off the circulation in his legs when he plays it. lol
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Well on the bright side, no one is just going to walk off with it.
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Oh Good. Someone else way craftier than I’ll ever be. 
That was an interesting video. I remember some of the Les Pauls got up around 15 lbs and players bitched about it. I’m wondering what a carbon fiber Les Paul would weigh. Cutting those fret slots with a hand held dremel blows my mind if they were friction fit.
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You are you just using the standard grill 20lb propane tanks? It are they the larger ones?
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Yeah basically. Im going to use the air tanks but they are 12 1/8 inch diameter. My 40 lb tanks measer 12 inches so the flanges should work the same and be universal.
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I just have 20lb tanks i don’t really need and I appreciate the ease of construction. I am just going to patiently watch for now.
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Really enjoying following your progress Matt. Do I correctly understand how this is working?
- Air comes in through the top, along with water drip
- Steam and air travel through glowing hot charcoal cone that has formed around the center pipe, via some holes in the pipe (flute??)
- The plate supporting the glowing charcoal forces the steam and air to flow through the glowing charcoal, causing the H2O to crack and CO from the charcoal to form
- The chargas now flows through to the next barrel below, and exits in a long path, which just cools it down
- The chargas exits the lower barrel and on to final filter, blower, engine, etc
Do I have that right?
Of course I just got the 81mm ammo can delivery last week for the ammo can crossdraft build, but now I want to build this one 
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Yeah it looks like you got it. Yeah build this new one instead. Save that ammo can for another day.
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How are you getting the ash out? Or do you just shut it down? I was thinking the ash was falling through to the bottom container the first time through. Then it was acting more like a cyclone filter on the way out.
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The ash should mostly migrate through to the cooler. But servicing the unit is why it has that nipple between the cooler and reactor. You just unscrew it and dump it in your compost and put it back on. You should not need to do this more than once a month of everyday use. I never have to mess with the CFX it does not accumulate ash.
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That is kind of what I was thinking you were saying or implying at least. Maybe I need to go back and look at the CFX design again. I need to toss this around in my head some more.
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Down draft charcoal units do not yeild white ash on any design. Charcoal units convert all of it there is no white ash to be left behind. Ive never seen white ash in any gasifier Ive ever produced and I have built over 500 machines. The only thing Ive had to deal with is packing. Dust and small fines packing at the back end is all and you get a lot of run time before that happens and needs to be dealt with. The CFX has a sliding grate system. There is a drag out plunger you insert into the chamber and then you slide that grade back and forth and drop out the packing. Drag it out and close the door and you are good for another month.
This unit wont be any different, exept you will have to dump it.
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yeah sorry, I was jumping ahead thinking, well I only need a flame, it doesn’t have to be clean gas… what if I use wood.
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Yeah dont fix a problem that dont exist.
As for wood fuel. Nah Im good Ill still convert it to charcoal I’d rather not deal with tar and get that crap in my blower ruining it. Yeah all the test blowers that had wood gas ran through them are all junk, I threw away over 500 bucks worth of blowers this year. But besides that my filter drums are all about shot as well. You dont have this with charcoal and with my retort with the added second stage. You would be amazed how little you actually lose. It only takes one fill in the fire box now and with the fuel feed stock pre staged it goes directly into gasificaiton mode and self sustains its own process heat. You would burn this same energy content with any other process.
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Thank you. I forgot about getting tar stuck in the blower… There goes that idea.
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Ok metal fab is done and I videoed it for the tutorial. Did the metal fab in about 3 hours! I wish I could build the CFX in 3 hours.
So done for today, tomorrow Ill will do the assembly video and hopefully if all goes well Ill be running the first test runs before end of the day.
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Ok finnished assembly today and gave her a go. I had a few issues with the lid, there are tabs you bend down from the clamping ring that secures the rope seal flange. The idea there is those help center the lid and I had them bend too far. So the lid was not able to fully seat and it sucked air inside. So yeah it got crazy hot and baked off the powder coat. I figuired that was going to happen eventually. So anyways Ill have to repaint the upper. Second issue is Im out of hardwoods for charcoal and been running some scrap wood that I have no idea what it even it. Its pipe its even less dense than that. So Im having some issues with fuel I think. Once I fixed the lid; I was able to get the engines to run but only for a short time. I think its the fuel Im running.
So done for today, Ill get the upper repainted and see if I can find some hardwood to convert to charcoal and try again with that fuel.
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