SO i want to point out that I am extremely unhappy with the castable resin for large pieces that aren’t rings or jewelry. We recently did a project for a client that came in a strictly digital files and this has been our first 100% successful casting from our Form 2. I had made door handles and small drawer pulls but they had some major issues with inclusions. Proud of how these came out. We didn’t have to treat them any differently than I would treat QuickCast patterns.
I neglected to get any photos of it in shell. sorry.
Instead of using a solid block of investment we are able to build a thin ceramic shell around the whole cluster. We dip the cluster in ceramic slurry then coat the wet slurry with stucco. Once the layer is dry then we repeat until we are satisfied with the thickness. The ceramic shell allows better control over cooling and much less material is wasted in the production of the shell than standard investment.
We dewax the shell in our autoclave like we would with any quickcast pattern and are able to incinerate the remaining material during firing of the shell.
Please let me know if i have neglected anything you’d like me to clarify.
Here’s our process. I havent added 3D patterns yet but i am in the process of updating the info page.
Actually i was able to burn-out the clear resin patterns directly. Took the prints, gated them, prepared them like i was using a quickcast pattern, built my shell, steam-dewaxed in the autoclave for the wax runner system, fired the shell to incinerate any resin, checked for cracking (was minimal), fixed cracks, preheated the shell, and finally poured the bronze. Using the clear resin was much less stressful than using castable.
@kkingcgi To mold from? I have made molds from the V-1 Grey and Clear. Clear is inexpensive and prints the quickest. If you want to make sure that your print doesn’t inhibit silicone curing I recommend (After full post cure) spraying it with Krylon Acrylic clear coat. just to add a barrier before mold. I also suggest a mold release before mold just because. I use conservators wax as a mold release.
To answer your question though. I Don’t think it matters what resin you mold from. it’s all about being able to clean up your object before molding it. The new grey looks great and i am excited about it. The matte surface may hold onto the mold material but I haven’t tried it yet.
If we send you our BlueCast resin for free, would you like to give a try on large parts? Actually biggest model we casted is a buckle, can be nice to see results on very solid part using your casting system in order to improve our resin.
@Erich_Knoespel would you mind detailing the problems you had with the castable blue material? I’ll be ordering my form2 in the next couple weeks and want to figure out whether or not I should be ordering the castable material for my larger-than-jewelry project.
It might help formlabs identify the problem and correct the formula.
Hi @SmithDrewSmith @Frew I just find that it is very expensive, doesn’t store well, degrades or separates in the tank far too quickly, and has a low success rate for anything larger than jewelry. The other resins have made the machine worth it though. I plan to use it to make injection molds for waxes in the future (maybe)
I found that it doesn’t store well in the tank. After a few prints the resin starts to develop white flakes and prints will fail at every attempt. if the print succeeds then I will have trouble post curing and then casting. ( i have tried to stir it into the resin again but it wasn’t having it.) It’s also very expensive for a product I have yet to have a successful print-to-cast experience with. Burnout isn’t particularly clean either.
Recently I gave it another try for a project. I used my own orientation and had poor print results (the flat areas near the build plate went to hell and were sloppy. A second attempt was made with Formlabs recommended support and orientation. the geometry was alright but there were peel issues where there were harsh lines across the print in some areas and the supports seemed to have pulled away from the main areas and taken shards from the printed shapes. The printer is quite amazing but the castable resin is sub par for my purposes unfortunately.
