Topic: [Pre ANN] Vulcanalia Mint Physical BTC and more (Read 12276 times)

Was discussing this thread yesterday. SS has stopped by recently. Would be great if this were to happen.

From what I can tell SaltySpitoon has gone missing . I've sent him a couple of PM's regarding this topic and his sales thread for silver/gold without a reply..

Would be cool though if he came in and just dropped some awesome products made from this .

Friendly bump to see if any progress has been made as some users recently brought this up in a slack discussion.   

I'd love to hear a status update as well!  Hopefully the equipment has been put to good use in the past couple months. 

Any updates to this salty? I'd love to see if you've perfected this now since it's been a couple of months since the last update. Hope you are doing well!

Thanks for the update.  I can't wait to see.   I'm hoping this idea works as I'd like to have your mint make a few things for me down the road.   

As expected, the mold didn't hold up too well. It kind of lost detail before I could even make casts in it from stress fractures. That said, I didn't follow the proper heating procedures of the investment plaster, so its not a huge surprise. I'm working on casting a silver ring right now, I'd show pictures, but the mold is in my furnace already. Hopefully tomorrow I'll actually have something to show. Currently working on finalizing a design for a semi Bitcoin related thing that I want myself, so others may as well. Will post pictures tomorrow.

That looks absolutely amazing

Can't wait to see how the final one looks like

Looks cool.
Glad to see that everything worked  out for you.
Keep us updated, and remember to take everything slowly as no one is in rush here

This kind of a mint can really make the premium on physical bitcoins much lower!
Cant wait to see it happens.

Sweet, I will keep an eye out on this, good luck on your venture!

Mold didn't turn out too bad, will update this post after I pour, hopefully get the piece out without breaking the mold, and then how it looks when its done/finished.

So I know its late for a daily update, but I had some buddies over for a fire, a few cocktails, and some blast furnace action, and I surprisingly made a lot of progress today.

I printed out this:



Alloyed a kilogram of Argentium 97% silver, 2% Germanium 1% copper:




And I made a mold out of jewelry grade investment casting powder, essentially fancy concrete. Placed the 3D printed Seahorse inside of it, and set the mold in the fire overnight. Tomorrow morning, the mold should be fired and ready to use. The plastic has already melted out of the mold leaving a perfect seahorse shaped crevice in the plaster. Just need to pour it in the top and see how it goes!

I'd have a picture of that as well, but my phone died, so I'll post it tomorrow morning. What this is is a proof of concept. Custom molds are very very expensive. The investment powder is expensive as well, but its fairly workable and would be super convenient for mold making. However, when lost wax casting - A jewelry creation method that I'm essentially doing, the mold is normally cracked open, so its a one time use. If I can pour multiple seahorses before the mold degrades and loses detail, that is a proof of concept that I'll be able to produce low premium high detail pieces. If I have to make each coin one at a time, they will be higher premium and I'll put a lot more effort into making them SUPER high quality to justify the price and time spent making the molds. If this works out, my options are greatly widened.

Great. I think a great deal of us are eagerly awaiting to see what you may come out with.   If you could make nice looking coins like you said with a low premium, your mint will be a huge success.

Was starting to wonder about updates .

Glad to hear you are still being active, focus on the important stuff now so that we can have fun later. Looking forward to updates, and no need rushing for me at least .

Running a bit behind schedule, finals, final projects, and preparations for finals are hitting me like a sack of hammers. Who had to make nuclear physics so damn time consuming? This is why I wont do preorders. Anyway, my expected November timeline is starting to look more like a mid December timeline. I've done a bit of metal experimentation in the free time I've had, but haven't really had 8+ hours to dedicate at any one time to get molds fired up.

I'll be sure to post any progress I make if I find a chance to do so before finals end.

So I've been sick since the weekend. That has certainly slowed things down a bit, for some reason pouring molten metal just doesn't feel right when you are under the weather.

Anyway, I'll probably be over it in the next couple of days, and I'm hoping this weekend will be a productive one.

Yes they can do it, but it depends on the parts complexity. Some pieces they send to be water jetted. Send me a drawing and we can go from there. Graphite sucks to work with...big time. I am sure we could just trade some custom work for some custom work 

So I've neglected my daily updates for a couple of days, but things were happening!

• Vacuum pump/casting table all set up.
• New crucibles arrived, tempering them tonight
• Furnace repairs made, apparently most refractory isn't rated to 4,000+ degrees
• All finishing materials arrived, probably missing some hand tools, but it is what it is, I'll get them when I realize I need them
• Electric Furnace Display still hasn't arrived, but thats but a minor inconvenience at this point

All of that said, theres a nearly 100% chance I'll have something made this weekend. A slight chance I'll have something made today. Assuming I can fire molds over a fire rather than in my electric furnace, I'm all set and ready to start casting. If I do need to fire my molds in the electric kiln, then I'll only be able to cast one of whatever I make, the mold wont be reusuable. Either way, that doesn't change that I'll be able to make at least one of something now.

Cool, I greatly appreciate it! This is something I planned on doing for myself later, but I figure I'll ask. Have you machined graphite before? I need a better CNC Mill before I'm able to make my own graphite molds. If you are able to make a few things, that might actually move my progress along. If not, its not a big deal, I've planned my releases around my own mechanical capabilities, with things requiring additional setup to come in later batches.

Let me know if you need any custom parts machined/created for your setup. I have access to a machine shop that is fairly large.