Cast Bronze Plaques

[kstrauss]

It's on my list of things to do.

 

[tesko]

There's one I know of in Cochrane, just outside Calgary:

Art Gallery In Cochrane, AB | Home | Studio West Bronze Foundry & Art Gallery

Studio West Bronze Foundry & Art Gallery in Cochrane, AB, is a stunning art gallery. For stunning art, monuments, and bronzes, visit or call us today.

www.donbeggstudiowest.ca

 

[Tobho Mott]

12 of the same plaque, or 12 different 100 word plaques? That's a lot of pattern letters...

Jeff

 

[kstrauss]

12 different 100 word plaques. Each to have name, DoB, DoD (only dead people considered) and brief description of achievements.

Yes, lots of words and I fear that I'll have to write or at least edit them!

 

[trevj]

12 different 100 word plaques. Each to have name, DoB, DoD (only dead people considered) and brief description of achievements.

Yes, lots of words and I fear that I'll have to write or at least edit them!

You REALLY need to hook up with someone with a CNC Router then. MDF, or HDF board is pretty cheap material. Computer graphic design is pretty easy work, from my experience, so you have all sort of options relating from everything between really basic text only, to some VERY nice pictures engraved or V-Carved in to the pattern. Lots of free-ware out there if you don't want to burn money, and a few really powerful commercial softwares that allow you a free month of use. Search for Vector Graphics Programs. Vector Graphics will scale to what size you need, and they will output file formats that are dead easy to import in to many CAD/CAM programs to use for engraving.

From some bad personal experiences, and a few late night panic sessions when I found out that someone provided me with a misspelled name, requiring a rework of the engraved tag, or faceplate, for the following morning's Presentation, find someone to spell-check the texts, especially the spellings of the names of the Honoree's, check dates, etc. Find someone that can pick fly poop out of a bowl of pepper, ie: with an eye for VERY fine detail. Nit-picky fine!

I think you can do pretty well, and make some really nice plaques that the families of those honored, will be proud of. Finding the foundries to cast them, seems the least of the problem.

 

[Tobho Mott]

A little smaller than you're looking for I guess, but FWIW Village Impressions out of Sarnia makes custom photopolymer stamps and has been friendly to hobby metal casters. You supply an all black and white image and she can make up to I think about a normal sheet of paper sized (last time I checked anyway) rubber stamp that is suitable to glue to a thin sheet of wood then sand draft on the edges of and use as pattern for sand casting. She really sells ink stamps, but her husband Joe C is a career foundryman and she knows not to mirror image your design if you tell her it's for a foundry pattern, and can incorporate photos and art and text up to the level of detail you'd expect from a rubber stamp. I don't know how the price compares to the CNC approach, but maybe something to look into?

 

[Tom O]

Anybody ever play with this stuff?

How To Make a Metal Cold Casting With Smooth-Cast™ 325 Resin

The metal cold-casting process is faster and much less expensive compared with foundry casting of molten metal.

www.smooth-on.com

 

[PeterT]

Yes, quite some time ago. Was part of a sample pack of different metal powders. Its very finely granulated, they list the mesh size somewhere. The composition doesn't necessarily correspond to a recognizable bar stock allow but bronze is some flavor of bronze, brass is some flavor of brass etc. You probably know but its an additive to a casting resin. Aluminum (alumina?) is an additive to epoxy for specialty tooling for molds to give it toughness, stability & temperature capability.