Has anyone tried using a quiet 12v blower like the following? http://www.seaflo.com/en-us/product/detail/663.html

Last thing that I need for my blast furnace build is a quiet-ish blower. Full power shop vac is obnoxiously loud. I have a few options.

1. Plug shop vac into harbour freight router speed controller. Run vac slower, quieter.

2. Put shop vac in garage and run something like 3 inch flexible duct hose from garage, out window, and down to furnace. Put ball valve in line to control air volume sent to furnace.

3. OR ... try out one of these 12 volt bildge blowers. Still need to control air flow with rheostat or inline dump valve.

Edit: Wife suggested that I specify that thread title was not meant to be a double entendre. She realized this because I'm "not really that funny", in her opinion. Ahhh, wedded bliss.

The diameter of your of your burner has a lot to do with the type of blower you use..... and proximity to the furnace.

A simple hair dryer can work, but your burner tube will need to be about 1.5-2 inches in diameter and you might need an exhaust port. But some come in two or three speeds.

A leaf blower will provide a higher CFM, but you might not need it all. It all comes down to the model you settle on. A exhaust port might be needed as well.

TO have a good full electrical speed will require a three phase motor (on VFD) or induction motor or a DC motor on the blower. Rio-stats give a chopped sine wave that are very unpredictable.

My burner is so small(1/2 ID) and with 10 feet of air delivery line(1/2 ID), I have a lot of static pressure which psi works in my favour. My big blower a run at half speed (or 32 Hz.), my little blower which is a four stage turbine only has one speed which I can dampen volume with ball valves. But the four stage turbine I can move away 25 feet with a garden hose to reduce the noise. I could put it in a insulated box too.

There's a lot of things to take into account with a blower. Rpm, static pressure, CFM, psi and how they all work together or need to work together to your needs.

My big blower turns at RPM and my little blower turns at 10,000 RPM.
Big blower pulls about 10 A at 240 V, my little blower pulls 15 A at 120 V. But the big blower is about a third the noise. And has a life cycle of 20 times the little blower. And both these blowers are big $.

Efficiency and thermal mass also have considerations on melting expectations. I just put my furnace on the wiegh scale yesterday and it is 150 pounds. From cold my record aluminum melt 4 kg, is 18 minutes, using just under 2 L of fuel. The inside of my furnace is 11.5 inch diameter by 14 inches tall. I can still juice up my fuel rates by almost 200%, but I can only juice up my air by 150%. I tried both and things start getting dangerously uncomfortable for me.

I had to replace my Bucket Vac Sunday to pour... must be 5 years old or better , running an hour+ darn near every week , I'm happy with that, though I would love for it to be quieter

V/r HT1

The trick is this entire thing is a balancing act. Fuel/air mixture is not a new concept for most of us. If you have a big ass blower thats fine, but you'll need to back it down by some means. My goal has always been to eliminate some of the variables to increase repeatability. I found a blower, run it on high speed and adjust the fuel for peak temp. It took me several tries with different blowers and almost cost me a finger tip. The hottest I need is for melting bronze. My quiet little blower is PERFECT for my kwiky, furnace size and 15psi compressed air I'm using to move the fuel.

Yes I did pull my first one from a junk microwave. It was on it's last leg when I tried it. I found out it worked perfect so I bought a good one on fleabay. It was real easy to wire it up. Most of them come with a small capacitor and the schematic is on it. I like the 3 or 4 speed motors. Reason, I start with it running on low, light the burner, shove it in the hole and slide the blower up to the pipe. Then I slowly crank up the fuel while shifting into high speed on the blower. I close my lid and adjust only the fuel for the right flame licking length out the exhaust hole. That's how I achieve the optimum air/fuel mixture. Too much fuel, exhaust gets black and sooty, too little and flame goes back inside. For me, it's 2-3" of flame out the hole. It is extremely possible to overheat aluminum and bronze. I melt my first pot of bronze inside of 25mins from outside air temp (around 20lbs worth) and the next pot in 10-15 mins. PLENTY fast enough for me. Could it go faster? Maybe, but I don't see the point. I want a controlled melt and want to pull my bronze at the right moment. There are things I'm looking for when melting bronze and I don't want to miss them.

One big difference is that the router speed controller is rated for up to 15 amps. The light switch rheostats that I looked at didn't even list a number for max supported amps. Guessing that its much less than 15. However, like you said, these are cheap China candy. Easy to replace upon inevitable failure.

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