looking for someone who has had reliable experience using castable resin patterns to go to bronze?
Need to get two copies of an 8.5" tall bronze figure casting made and delivered before sept 1st.
I can provide prints… or the printing files… anyone out there know someone capable of burning out castable and getting a good bronze?
I have not done this type of work, but I think I saw someone mention using a hollow model to accommodate the expansion of the resin.
I would also be curious if you could use a regular resin with that technique, since the standard resins are much less expensive than the castable.
Where are you located? I know there’s a foundry outside in Austin, Texas.
i’m in southern california.
I was one of the guys who suggested printing hollow.
And I bought a whole liter of castable months ago- might as well use it up.
There are foundries- but not many that have a small controllable kiln they would be willing to reprogram for the complex ramp schedule for castable resin.
Just wondering if anyone has actually found one… or anyone here runs a small foundry capable of casting figures around 6" tall.
@Sculptingman, I contacted the local foundry, and they DO take .stl files, print, and cast. I don’t know if they’ll cast a pre-existing model…she talked about a material that I didn’t recognize. They do large-scale art foundry casting.
The only problem is that the turnaround is 12 weeks. However, being near Austin, it sounds like they are up on the latest technology. I told them your project was small, and she said it would still take 12 weeks…not sure if they could work it in.
Another possibility is Shapeways, although I don’t know about their bronze capabilities as far as casting. They use a sintering technology for some of their bronze.
The company name is Deep in the Heart of Art (a play on “Deep in the Heart of Texas”).
You might want to check out this thread
You might want to work your way through that list to see if anyone can meet your timeline. You will probably need to put in some finish work once you receive the casting back - it will be most likely be raw and in need of sanding, tumbling, etc.
Shapeways would probably be your best bet to get it done quickly. They will also finish it however you want them to, but it would probably be expensive to go that route. I don’t think they use Formlabs printers either.
Last I checked they didn’t use Formlabs printers. I had ordered a wax model from them about two years ago, and the quality was absolutely horrible…hence the purchase of my FL printer so I could experiment more.
I did find this on Shapeways’ site…it looks like the size is fairly small…not up on my metric system measurements, but I think 100mm is about 4":