[sudo-discuss] wax into bronze

Wed Aug 6 17:51:36 PDT 2014

By the way, I did wind up ordering some low-melt alloys from RotoMetals,
including pure Gallium (melts in your hand!), Field's metal (melts at
144F/60C) and a Bismuth/Tin alloy (melts at 281F/139C).

I'll bring them to the Omni this evening, if anyone wants to ogle them. The
Bi/Sn alloy seems very useful: it's cheap, and it melts at a temperature
that is higher than boiling water, but low enough to melt over a regular
stove.

Patrik

On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 10:54 AM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Let's forget about bronze for now, and just focus on lower temperature
> alloys that you can melt on a stove top!
>
> Field's metal <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field%27s_metal> melts at
> 144C (the temperature of a hot cup of coffee) and is nontoxic. It's a bit
> expensive though, because of its high Indium content. There's some
> Bismuth/Tin alloys that melt at a little above the boiling point of water
> and are much cheaper. Great for casting buttons, medals, figurines, and
> other trinkets. Or for mechanical components that won't be exposed to high
> heat.
>
> There's a bunch of other low-temperature casting metals available that
> have different useful properties in terms of strength and ductibility etc.
> See:
>
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusible_alloy#Low_melting_alloys_and_metallic_elements
> http://www.rotometals.com/Low-Melting-Fusible-Alloys-s/21.htm
>
> Field's: http://www.rotometals.com/product-p/lowmeltingpoint144.htm *$69
> for 1/4lb*
> "used for die casting and easy prototyping."
>
> Bi/Sn: http://www.rotometals.com/product-p/lowmeltingpoint281alloy.htm
> *$15.29/lb*
> "This alloy can be used to anchor shafts in permanent Magnesiumnet rotors,
> locator members in aircraft assembly fixtures, metal parts in glass,
> Magnesiumnets in fixtures, make nests for parts in jigs and dial feed
> stations, Cores for electroforming, Embossing dies, form blocks, Joggle
> jaws, Lost wax pattern dies, Duplicate foundry patterns, Tracer models in
> profiling, Molds for plastics, sheet plastics, plastic teeth, prosthetic
> development, Potting electronic components, Laps for rifle barrels."
>
> Patrik
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 9:38 AM, Anca Mosoiu <anca at techliminal.com> wrote:
>
>> I too would love to participate in a wax carving workshop, and a
>> mold-making one as well. And I would love to learn more about bronze
>> casting.
>>
>> tl;dr below:
>>
>> I know someone who's a sculptor, and she talks about the expense of
>> working with bronze - both in terms of the cost of materials, and the cost
>> of operating a forge.  She also talks about how incredible it is to work
>> with FIRE and melt metal, which makes it sound really amazing.
>>
>> There's a fair bit of time involved in preparing the mold for complicated
>> object so that it can be cast properly.  The lost wax casting method
>> involves making the wax object, putting the mold material around it,
>> drilling holes in the mold where the metal gets poured in, and then melting
>> the wax out.  If you plan to make a one-off piece, you break the mold after
>> pouring the metal.  Otherwise, you have to know how to cut it so that it
>> can be removed from the cast object (e.g.if you have parts that fold in on
>> themselves).
>>
>> I was curious, so I went online to see where one might buy the raw metal
>> for casting.  Bronze is apparently about $15/lb (
>> http://www.mcmaster.com/#red-metal-ingots/=t29up6) from an industrial
>> supplier, but I found it cheaper through eBay (12lb ingots for $90 + $20
>> shipping from the east coast).  It contains copper, which at the moment has
>> a pretty high market value (and is a reason why people steal copper wire,
>> statues, and things).  People buy leftover bronze from machine shops, but
>> there are issues with mixing different kinds of bronze alloys together.
>>
>> Woo!
>>
>> Anca.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 30, 2014 at 12:06 AM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
>>
>>> I will have to ask about pricing, but perhaps we can make something so
>>> awesome that they will decide to make it "on the side" so that they can
>>> sell copies of it for their own profit.  Think something immensely useful.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 30 Jul 2014, Marc Juul wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Jul 29, 2014 at 9:32 PM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
>>>>       yes the place I got the robot from is a foundry that makes
>>>> seriously the most beautiful bronze sculptures / statues (no size
>>>>       too big) that i have ever seen ever.
>>>>
>>>>       and one of their people visited sudoroom and liked the place.  If
>>>> we made someting out of wax that was beautiful, we could
>>>>       talk with them about turning it into bronze.. or a negative that
>>>> could make many copies.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My experience with professional bronze casting is that it's super
>>>> expensive! Are they willing to give us a hefty discount or what? I'd be
>>>> interested if I knew it could be made into bronze for sure without
>>>> breaking my/our budget.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> marc/juul
>>>>
>>>>       On Tue, 29 Jul 2014, Vicky Knox wrote:
>>>>
>>>>             Wax into bronze?!?!?!!?!?!?! :D I love chose your own
>>>> adventure email threads. I just clicked on the "..." on the
>>>>             sentence: "Also the people who sold us the robot can turn
>>>> wax
>>>>             into bronze..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>       _______________________________________________
>>>>       sudo-discuss mailing list
>>>>       sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
>>>>       https://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> -=-=-=-
>> Anca Mosoiu | Tech Liminal
>> anca at techliminal.com
>> M: (510) 220-6660
>> http://techliminal.com | T: @techliminal | F: facebook.com/techliminal
>>
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>
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