Backyard Casting

In the back half of the 2020 Spring semester of Olin, our Material Science class was planning on proceeding with a new project. We were to take e-waste we found in the world and melt down the components so we can make our own creations from what was previously considered waste. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 outbreak forced learning to go virtual while students were spread across the world. But we still wanted to try and do hands-on work with the metals we had been working with for the majority of the semester, such as aluminum. Working with our professor Jon Stolk, we found that we could make our own backyard foundries to melt metal, as long as we took the necessary safety precautions. So we set out to try to safely cast aluminum in the confines of our own backyards. Here we document our experiences and findings from our quarantine-based Material Science project.