Looking for foundry in the UK,preferably Surrey/Kent for casting using castable resin

[iDig3Dprinting]

Wondered anybody can recommend a foundry in the UK to help a customer cast some jewellery from 3D printed castable resin .


The castable resin starts burning off from 300C. It speeds up about 375-400 C. There is no melting point. It straight goes to burning off. The investment cast that has been used in the past is Plasticast from Ransom and Randolph but this is not to say this is the only choice. The burning off procedure that has been used in the past to cast rings is:


Preheat to 167C hold:0Mins
INsert Flask at 167C Hold:0Mins
heat at 1C/min to 177C hold:30mins
Heat 2C/Min to 732C Hold: 3hrs
Heat at -2C/min casting temp Hold 1hr

This is the information that we currently have.
If any body has any ideas, guidance or knows of somebody who can help we would be grateful for the info.
The resin is Daylight Castable resin

[awerby]

I haven't tried that particular resin, but I've found that it helps, when burning out resin patterns, to introduce a little air into the kiln at the end of the burnout cycle. This helps the residual ash combust. Are you using one of those new Photocentric machines? How's it working for you?

[iDig3Dprinting]

Hi Awerby, thanks for the info. Yes this is the Photocentric Liquid Crystal 10". We are trying to help a customer find a suitable foundry.

Can we ask, have you ever run both traditional lost wax castings along side resins? Our feedback from one foundry was that they could not do this due to danger of ignition of the wax, spoiling those castings?

presumably, introducing the air into the kiln would increase the likely hood of this ignition??

Casting is not our thing, hence this information gathering exercise.

[awerby]

I saw one of those printers at the Inside 3D Printing show in San Diego, and wrote about it in my blog: http://computersculpture.com/blog#fr...ech2016_anchor

I haven't burned out wax patterns at the same time as resin ones, although I use wax for spruing the resin. I don't see an issue with wax ignition, since the wax will run out and ignite (if it's going to do that) well before the resin starts combusting. If the wax does ignite, it's not a problem; the kiln and molds are impervious to a little flame, in my experience anyway. But the resin needs a longer and hotter burnout cycle than normal wax patterns, as well as the Plasticast investment, so I keep them separate.

Sorry, I don't know who does this in the UK, but over here people that do jewelry casting don't usually call themselves "foundries" - that's reserved for those doing larger castings. Search for "jewellery casting UK" and ask the companies you find that way if they deal with resin models.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

[CSMonkey]

Try contacting JH May models and prototypes. They already offer a rapid casting service from SL resin models, so they are probably the best placed to speak to about this process.

http://www.jhmay.com/

Hope this helps,

Rich

[iDig3Dprinting]

Hi Rich (AKA CSMonkey),

Thanks for the suggestion we will look into this.

[iDig3Dprinting]

I saw one of those printers at the Inside 3D Printing show in San Diego, and wrote about it in my blog: http://computersculpture.com/blog#fr...ech2016_anchor

I haven't burned out wax patterns at the same time as resin ones, although I use wax for spruing the resin. I don't see an issue with wax ignition, since the wax will run out and ignite (if it's going to do that) well before the resin starts combusting. If the wax does ignite, it's not a problem; the kiln and molds are impervious to a little flame, in my experience anyway. But the resin needs a longer and hotter burnout cycle than normal wax patterns, as well as the Plasticast investment, so I keep them separate.

Sorry, I don't know who does this in the UK, but over here people that do jewelry casting don't usually call themselves "foundries" - that's reserved for those doing larger castings. Search for "jewellery casting UK" and ask the companies you find that way if they deal with resin models.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

Thanks for the help Andrew. We seem to be making some progress on this so you experience is really helpful. It seems we were starting this from a position of miss information from one "foundry", which in retrospect it seems like they just didn't want to do it.