Supporting > Casting

Yesterday's investment casting

<< < (3/3)

bent:
Thanks again, Dick.  My son now owns an Elegoo (I think?  A UV resin printer anyways.  I'll have to talk him into doing some zinc castings somewhere down the road, either for his D+D models or for a flywheel or similar for me...

Dick Morris:
Other than size, the different brands of resin printers should all have similar capabilities.

The largest learning curve for me has been learning 3D drafting to create the files to print from. Basic shapes are fairly easy, but complex parts can be a real challenge. The free software is extremely capable, I only wish I was competent in more of its capabilities.

I've used 3D prints to make patterns for sand casting, and this is probably what you want to would use for the zinc alloys. I've used castable resin and investment casting for bronze only. Commercially, investment casting is also used for stainless steel, titanium, gold, platinum, and other higher melting point metals. I've seen mention of using investment casting for aluminum - I think being successful would mostly be a matter of having the burned out flask at the proper (lower) pouring temperature. I've never seen anything on zinc alloys being investment cast. That may be because zinc is used to cut material and manufacturing costs when a large quantity of parts are needed. Investment casting is a slow and expensive way to create parts and the material cost is only a relatively small part of the overall cost.

I've sand cast ZA-27 zinc alloy and it casts and machines nicely.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page