Hi, I have a question concerning the castable wax material: I have one application (Electroforming) where I would want to just melt out the resin, not burn it out - is this possible with the castable wax resin? If so, at what temperature does it start melting? Appreciate your input
Electroforming?
Electroforming is a thick copper or nickel plating on a wax form. The plated part is subsequently cut open and the wax melted out, leaving you with a hollow part with a precisely defined inner structure.
If the castable wax could be directly melted out, there would be no need for first creating a negative and then wax forms for electroforming, seriously enhancing the process and opening up another field of application for the Form 2.
I have been wondering about that too. I usually just put a pinhole in my electroformed wax carvings to vaporize the wax out. Good question.
the wax can melt- but not the UV cured acrylic used as a binder. The Castable wax idea is that the wax will reduce from pyrolysis under high heat pretty quickly- rather than expand- and thus allow the resin to expand into the area the wax is no longer taking up- rather than fracturing the investment or ceramic mold.
I doubt the resin would melt or flow in any way- and you would have to still bring it up to the burnout temp to eliminate the resin.
And it would still need to be vented in some fashion so the burnout products have a way out.
For anything really complex- the issue of melting wax out is that it would have to have an internal contour that would allow the liquified wax to flow out- without puddling or getting trapped in blind hollows that have no means for air to enter. The other concern would be that the wax is viscous and would leave a coating on the internal surfaces.
We used to do a lot of electroforming in making rotational molds- we generally used a very weak mix of regular plaster- that we coated with an electrolyte so we could plate over it. Of course after the initial plate of nickle and then copper, we used an arc spray metal system to build up thickness over the plated layers to a fairly robust shell.
To clean the plaster out we actually used a high pressure water gun.
Thanks everyone for your input! I’ll keep you posted if I get to try out using the castable wax for electroforming.
Castable Wax will not melt out. If you want to use it for electroforming then you could either just leave the resin inside the object permanently or you might try using one of the other resins possibly high temperature resin to make a rubber mould into which you can inject wax and then electroform that. But Castable wax Resin does not melt and it does expand considerably when heated and would probably break your electroformed object.
Hello,
I toght so…and took a part and burned it with a gaz butan solder. It becomes ashes, not liquid.
Hoping that the ashes left are less than in the BLEUE CASTABLE RESIN -sometimes leaving porosity in casted pieces.
Make the experience in your side.
Regards
Luis