Molten metal supply cylinder, molten metal supply apparatus incorporating such a supply cylinder and molten metal supply method

Abstract

An object of the present invention is to provide a molten metal supply cylinder that has a simple configuration if compared with the configurations of the prior art and can suppress mixing of oxide that is produced on the surface of a low melting point metallic material in a solid phase with molten metal. The present invention is a molten metal supply cylinder for melting a low melting point metallic material in a solid phase and supplying the molten metal material, characterized by including a melting section to be directly or indirectly brought into contact with a low melting point metallic material to produce molten metal and a substantially tubular flow path that has a first opening formed at an end thereof in the melting section and a second opening at the other end thereof and allows the molten metal produced in the melting section to flow, wherein the oxide of the surface layer of the low melting point metallic material is removed by an oxide removing section before the low melting point metallic material is molten in the melting section.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.