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| Bernd:
--- Quote from: Weston Bye on February 27, 2010, 07:16:20 AM ---Forgive me for popping in after a long absence, (still here regularly, just lurking) but has anybody any photo examples of items made with machinable wax apart from the test cuts shown here? How would the machinable wax behave for use with lost-wax casting? --- End quote --- Weston, Here's a couple of pictures of a wax gear. The company I used to work for produced gear cutting machines and also did development work on the cutters and designed gears for their customers. If I remember right the waxes came in three hardness's, meaning there were three colors. They were purple, green and blue. I believe the green was the hardest, blue a bit softer and purple the softest. I can't remember what was being tested hear, weather a new gear cutter or and new gear design. Here's a closer view. You can tell from the top land that something needs to be changed. I sort of destroyed the gear wanting to use a bit of the wax. It goes from solid to liquid. No intermediated stage. For those that want to know a little bit more about wax and the posible uses for casting, check out Rio Grande Catalog. It's a jewlery catalog. Click on casting on the home page. At the left it will give many choices. Bernd |
| PTsideshow:
Here is the manufacturer of most flavors of the casting wax Over the years they have bought out most of the smaller suppliers. The biggest thing with it is you want it to come out of the mold whether it is slip casting coating, or the flask style. So there would be No plastic of any kind in it, to leave any residue in the smaller area's of the mold such as arms, prongs or thin cross sections. This is their retail end Both have links to the same video's on the net for mold making and casting Here is the wax index, it has a good assortment of waxes Here are the brown and red casting waxes |
| AdeV:
Nice find, thanks Glen. If I've done my sums right, their 7x3x3 block weighs around 2lbs, so ~$8 lb. I'm basing that on the density being 0.9 (I read it was, somewhere) of water. Here's another update, as a result of today's machining adventures... It transpires that, when pouring fresh melt onto already solid, things don't always go quite to plan: I don't know how deep that split is; nor do I intend to find out unless I absolutely have to... Anyway, I decided to try a repair on the scrap bit, to see how well it works. Broken plastic, meet Mr Blowtorch : Shortly: I've added a little bit of extra wax (from another offcut) into the melted bit, to increase the volume. The hardest bit of using the blowtorch method was not setting the wax on fire too often. And not burning your fingers while trying to melt bits into the gap... Un-seen by the camera, I also tried repairing the smaller crack using a soldering iron. Then, after both repairs had cooled (and I'd finished sizing the main block), I whizzed through the repairs with a cutter: From the pictures, one can conclude that Mr Blowtorch is not quite as effective as Mr Soldering Iron - although in fairness, the crack was much narrower where I repaired with the soldering iron. Ultimately, the conclusion has to be: Pour the wax in one go if you possibly can. |
| 75Plus:
Ade, Have you considered using an electrical paint stripper to do your repairs? It is a SUPER hair drier that gets hot enough to soften paint so it can be peeled away. It should be hot enough to melt the wax and, with no flame, there should be no flare up problems. You can also add a reducer to the output to focus the heat to the area that needs it. Joe |
| AdeV:
Hi Joe - good thinking, I can't see why it wouldn't work. I don't have one of those paint strippers myself (used to, but it burnt itself out), but if I can get hold of one, I'll certainly give it a go (unless someone else posts results up here first)... |
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