Has anyone thought about doing "lost wax casting" with HPS?

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sprior
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:37 pm

Has anyone thought about doing "lost wax casting" with HPS?

Post by sprior » Tue May 13, 2014 4:11 pm

An idea popped into my head that since we don't have the ability to print with wax to do lost wax casting, would it be possible to achieve the same thing by printing with HIPS, encasing the print with maybe plaster, and then dissolving the HIPS by soaking the plastic in Limonene? If it worked it would be doable with what is currently readily available.

Has anyone given this any thought?

Toby
Posts: 330
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:44 pm

Re: Has anyone thought about doing "lost wax casting" with H

Post by Toby » Tue May 13, 2014 5:00 pm

You can do "lost PLA" casting. I'm currently looking into getting a small kiln to do that.

I haven't tried this, but I've read that you can get decent results just by surrounding the model in plaster, then heating it up with a blow torch and pouring the melted PLA out, then melting your metal and pouring it in.

Of course you have to know about how to add sprues and vents and those things, and be very careful around melted metal and water, etc.

There are a slew of low melting point temperature alloys that I think should be easy to work with. I'm gearing up to try this, but my condo association might have a bit of a problem if I start melting metal with a blowtorch on my balcony.

Toby
Posts: 330
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:44 pm

Re: Has anyone thought about doing "lost wax casting" with H

Post by Toby » Tue May 13, 2014 5:18 pm

Oh I didn't read your post carefully enough- you mean a non-heat way of dissolving the print and producing the mold.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Only question would be what the limonene does to the plaster.

If you print in PVA, you could dissolve in water, but then you wouldn't want to use gypsum plaster. However you might be able to do it with a lime-based plaster (cement). But then I don't know how that reacts to the molten metal.

I have no experience in any of this-- just thinking about it as well. My feeling is that the whole area is wide open for innovation. No one's tried different ways of casting because there was no reason to before now. I say, try it! The cost is minimal and you're bound to learn something interesting even if it fails.

Meanwhile, this was on 3ders.org the other day:

http://www.3ders.org//articles/20140512 ... nters.html

sprior
Posts: 384
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:37 pm

Re: Has anyone thought about doing "lost wax casting" with H

Post by sprior » Tue May 13, 2014 6:01 pm

The main reason behind my idea was that I didn't know if PLA would melt fluidly enough to get out of all the fine details like a wax would. One question is whether the HIPS dissolves all the way into a thin solution or whether it stays a little gunky.

I'm still new at this and don't know when I'd try it, but I've got a package of plaster around so the cost would just be the HIPS or disolvable PLA.

I don't have any knowledge or equipment for metal casting, but in my area (CT) I know there are historical reenactment folks who I've seen do demos in pewter, so maybe someday I'll find one of them and see if they want to play around a little.

Toby
Posts: 330
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:44 pm

Re: Has anyone thought about doing "lost wax casting" with H

Post by Toby » Tue May 13, 2014 6:18 pm

My understanding is that if you use PLA in a kiln at a high temperature, then it completely burns out just like wax. It goes into a gaseous state and gets out of everything.

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