Quote:
Originally Posted by Astro
We used a similar technique in our secondary school art class to mould pewter. We used wax to create the form of the item. This was placed in a steel cup, then we pored liquid plaster into the cup to surround the wax form. Once the plaster set the whole thing was heated in an oven. The wax ran out. Then we just pored the molten pewter into the void left by the wax. Then the whole thing was immersed in water and the plaster dissolved away leaving the pewter item. Because the plaster was so fine the finished object had all the fine detail of the original wax form.
Certainly the wax was easy to work with and was easy to remove from the mould without leaving residue that affected the final result.
I just checked wiki and plaster moulds are good up to 1200C so aluminium's 660C melting point shouldn't be a problem.
Can 3D printers use wax as the medium rather than plastic? |
Oh hell yeah! The process for printing wax is a bit more fiddly though. You have to deal with hot wax and cooling times, the balance needs to be spot on.
The usual method for wax is an inkjet type arrangement. Trying to "extrude" hot wax would be a royal *&$%^!
Here is a vid that covers a lot of 3D printing processes at 6:06 they show one of the wax type printers. Those things can print some very very fine detail!
I have actually tried to use plaster and found that it tends to fall apart to easily which is the reason for going with ceramic. It is a bit labor entensive but it can capture very very fine detail as well. This vid shows the process I am going to use but instead of a wax part it will be a 3D printed part in PLA plastic. PLA is a plant based plastic and burns out of the mold with very little residue. The narrator is a bit odd, either it is a computer generated voice or this guy is just 2D.
Cyruscosmo