Quick survey on Foundries

[Mcgyver]

I have a "gentleman's" foundry lol, I thought to call it that because its in the basement so compared to the guys with roaring big oil and gas fired furnaces in the backyard its rather diminutive, prim and proper. (I have riged ventilation as some melts can omit same nasties) Everything is investment cast using either wax, 3D resin or 3D filament patterns, nothing much bigger than your fist. The set up is a 3kg electric melter, burn out oven and a vacuum caster. I've cast AL, silver and bronze.

 

[phaxtris]

@Mcgyver Wich electric furnace do you have? Is it the standard Asian import 3kg furnace ?

 

[jcdammeyer]

In case anyone is interested in the mixing of 3D print technologies with green sand core based casting here is what I'm trying to make:

I thought it would be interesting to make T-Slot cores so I 3D printed the core box.


Now the core mixture gets packed into this and then the core box is split and the compressed part laid on a metal plate destined for baking in the oven.


One baked. Three yet to hit the oven. To avoid having to drill a hole and since the pattern (unfinished here) has a hole in the center I need a core for it too.

I still had the core box from the Gingery Lathe TailStock:

So I made a short core and baked that too. The cast aluminum core holder was to help keep the core round in the oven.

I've yet to put glossy paint on the pattern and although the primed version pulled nicely from sand I think I have possibly made the draft backwards on the cores.

 

[kevin.decelles]

I just hate taking a nice piece of 3” round and turning 70% of it into swarf. Depending on how precise your pattern is this can drop to 10% swarf.
One of the more satisfying things is if you decide to change your design or screwed up when machining, you just remelt and start over.

Ditto.

Take my pattern for making levelling feet. I can make 4 of them in an hour that need 5 mines of cleanup. Minimum swarf. Plus, you can easily cast a rough version of something that would be timely in cnc