Casting bronze from a Makerbot print
This was an experiment to see if I could take a 3D print from a Makerbot (thanks, Mike!), in ABS, and treat it as a master for lost-wax casting.
The answer would seem to be yes (though my casting technique is still a bit rubbish, and needs work) :
( Read more... )
The answer would seem to be yes (though my casting technique is still a bit rubbish, and needs work) :
( Read more... )
Comments 6
Is there any reason the injector assembly couldn't take a suitable wax?
Questions, questions...
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If you click the album link you can see the master, which is definitlely smoother than the casting. The sausagey texture is what the Makerbot does. The whole thing is only about 12mm high.
Casting was into jewellery investment, only lightly misused, but with gravity rather than centrigugal or vacuum gizmos.
I'm not sure there is a suitable wax. It needs to be sturdy enough to feed into the injector as a 3mm wire, and it needs to have a suitable softening temperature so it will stick to the previous layer but also cool quickly enough to be hard when the next layer comes round.
As the primary recreation of MakerBot owners seems to be tweaking the thermal parameters to get the material they have to work right, I thought it most expedient to go with the one that already worked in Mike's machine. And I'm not sure there's a downside to doing it with ABS. It burned out cleanly, and it's a bit sturdier than wax during the setup phase.
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Now in bronze! Awesome!
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So yes - many thanks for your propeller thing!
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