I wish to build a foundry, based on a Babington burner. It will be for Al only. Is there an obvious choice of thermal couple to monitor melt temperature? Is there an infrared device that can do this job?

http://www.omega.com/ppt/pptsc.asp?ref=SP-HF-K&Nav=tema09

http://www.omega.com/ppt/pptsc.asp?ref=SP-HF-K&Nav=tema09

Thank you very much. :)

Tom,

Be careful with the optical pyrometers. The most important setting for using this type of instrument is the emissivity setting. Different materials have different emissivities. Within the aluminum furnace, you have the molten aluminum on bottom and the top layer will be a layer of dross. This dross has a different emissivity than the molten aluminum below. .... Thermocouple wires are cheap and if you already have a good multi-meter that is all that you will need. There should be charts for thermocouple types and the corresponding temperature to millivoltage correlation on the web somewhere.