Well, if at first you don't succeed....

The electric furnace that I built worked for some time, at least a few full days of foundry work. But the chamotte fire bricks took way too long to warm up, around 3 hours from turning it on until the aluminum was ready for pouring. 

So I decided to replace the fire bricks with a more advanced insulating brick, which I got to test yesterday. And it made a huge difference! The furnace reached the correct temperature in only 20 minutes, and in an extra 15-20mins the aluminum is ready. 

Also when I disassembled the furnace, I found that all the metal wire and parts that I had used to fasten the bricks and the kanthal-wire had gotten so oxidized that they just fell apart into powder. So now I replaced the cable joints with stainless ones, that hopefully will last a bit longer. Also the brick itself is insulating the furnace so the heat wont transfer out as much.

Now hopefully I can finish the last parts for the current batch of Satrans. Wohoo!