Hey Folks,
I was poking around on the web and found this idea but if you got the cash and a Dentist Office at your disposal then your in luck but check this out at
http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2004/03/stuff_eng_tech_metal_casting.htm
and give me your comments and see if this would make it easier for those who are making the AMT F7F’s, Revellograms F-105’s, ME-262’s, and Trumpiteer’s F-105’s and all those planes with weak nose & main gear struts
It doesn’t look very easy, or cheap to me. I don’t think he is talking about materials that are easy to come by. I don’t have a vacuum oven handy any more.
Here-Here;
I do agree but if you invest all that cash for the equipment then why not make a run for the rest of the modelers and start a new business to recover the funds spent on the equipment
Did I read the directions right? You destroy the pattern and the mold, each time you cast one. That is expensive and time consuming. You’re not going to get $800 a piece like they do for a crown. It seems like a lot of people who get into the aftermarket casting business don’t last very long. But it is still an idea.
hey Wayne,
there is a way to make the masters with out wasting the orignal kit parts, if you use the orignal part to make the wax copy in a silicone mold then cast the wax part for the metal casting mold then it’ll be cost effective and the orignal part will not be wasted
Hey Cuda. That process is called, strangely enough, the lost wax method. Bill Ruger was a pioneer in this process. They use it for all of there handgun, rifle and shotgun frames. Plus they have a subsidiary that deals in commercial castings for other clientelle. The name of the company escapes me at the present.
Randie [C):-)]
Yeah, I read that article. It’s interesting, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I ever have the resources or equipment to do anything like that.
Regards,
So thats why my Dentist went up on his prices, to pay for his modeling habit…
Randie,
i trust you mean that Bill Ruger was a pioneer of this process in some kind of modern mechanized context!
from the metropolitan museums website:
“The basic method of lost-wax casting has been widely practiced on the African continent for centuries. While it is difficult to establish how the method was developed or introduced to the region, it is clear that West African sculptors were casting brass with this method for several hundred years prior to the arrival of the first Portuguese explorers along the coast in 1484.”
what I think ( and thus is why I get mygrains ), is the what Chopperfan was meaning is for the hard metals & small detailed parts and not brass or bronze castings, and style of casting by using vacuums and vibrators ot remove the air pockets in the casting material
Thanks Ed and Dennis.
Dennis said exactly what I meant. BUT! I did not realise that it had been around for that long.
Randie [C):-)]
Oh man! Someone seriously needs to go on more dates and spend less time in the dentist office during his free time. It’s not like I’m going to stack encyclopedias on my F-105!
Eric
I think I remember Sheperd Payne showed how to cast metal parts in one of his books. It seemed alot easier and less exspensive obviously. I think he just made a mold with RTV and then melted some metal in a ladle over the oven.