Silicone and epoxy resin
- 2 part process. Cast the silicone around the part to be copied, then pour Resin into your mold.
- Different types of Resin have different strength profiles. For impact/shatter resistance, and with some flexibility (non stiffness), (semi rigid or high impact, if you can find those) Polyurethane Resin (such as Smooth-On Task 8 or Smooth-Cast 300/325 series.
Casting Metal in Molds
- plaster for silver (both fine and sterling), ceramic for bronze, sand for iron, and selastic rubber for pewter. There's no issues with pouring metal into plaster,
- Plaster does not melt; nor does ceramic, and sand is fine at the temperatures used for cast iron. Similarly, selastic is temperature resistant to a certain level, and pewter melts at a comparatively low temperature, so it won't melt in that case.
microwave melting -- there are inexpensive microwave kilns that will melt small amounts ("jewelry" quantities) of many metals.
SAND
Aquarium sand from a pet store is very find (or play sand but you have to sift it)
Kitty Litter (clay)
- 95% or 90% sand with the clay, by weight
- plastic bag and pound with a hammer, sift out the fine stuff (powdered sugar consistency)
add WATER
- so it's moist not wet, use a spray bottle
- consistency where it'd be great to make sand castles
GLASS
- soda lime glass at 2200degrees
- mold is closed to keep it hot and then opened when blower nears
CNC mold from 3d files
- Step Files or IGS is the format to send someone, not STL, so they can make a file to cut a mold.
- (STLs don't have curves, they're huge in filesize (means you have to scale it again when you open it)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1MfnNz3xWk at like 19:00
INVESTMENT CASTING
- zircon or other very fine ceramic slurry
- colloida-cilica binder and few cilica flowers is the liquid, water based
- dries for up to 3 hours (2 to 3 degrees f)
- 7 or 8 times
- and a final 24 hour dry just to make sure
- 68 degrees and then heated to melt the wax (they cool it to shrink so when it expands we dont crack the shell
- half hour to an hour at 200 degrees
- melt steel at 3000 degrees into oven at 1800 degrees and pour it into the (still hot) shell
- they buy stamping scrap, washed
Glaze
- cilica, alumina, and some kind of flux, alongside pacifiers, colorants, whatever, feldspar, nephilim cyanide,
- red iron oxide (deep green after gas-fired kiln in reduction atmosphere. If in oxidized atmos, putrid yellow
SILVER
- 28.35 grams in an ounce
- a typical gold ring might be 3-7 grams
- $20 per ounce of silver
- $5 or so dollars to make a ring of silver