Metal Casting Zone Info Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Made’

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Model cars that were made by the Franklin and the Danbury Mints from die cast metal are heavy but not magnetic. I don’t know what the metal composition is, but it’s too heavy to be aluminum. I’ve also seen some with corrosion. I asked this question in the toy/hobby category and got no answers. A friend suggested ‘potted metal’ which is another metal I don’t know. Anybody?

It is my second edition of homemade electric foundry for aluminium. This foundry has 2000 Watt electric power and need electric temperature regulation. I do not regulate electric power and teater was overheated Do not let heater’s temperature increase more, then 800 C.

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Before crafting handmade jewellery two things, casting and making of jewellery by hand, must be understood. This will help you to decide whether making of jewellery by hand is worse or better, than casting.

The handcrafted jewellery is designed by hammering, bending, twisting and soldering the metal in desired form. For instance, while making a plain gold wedding ring the jeweller will start off by having a lump of gold metal in an undefined shape and will melt it down. Then he will pour the melted gold into a steel container which will harden the liquid for giving desired shape. The liquid will be turned into a thick bar. Then jeweller will roll the piece up to a time that he will finally get a long flat piece. After that he will cut down the pieces in a length that can be easily fit in customer’s finger. In the next stage he will hammer the piece to give a shape of ring and will join the both corners to create a ring. After that, he will give it a nice circular shape and polish it. Then recommended gems or crystals will be fitted into the ring. Now the gold wedding handmade ring is ready. This whole process might take one hour or little more. The whole process will start again as mentioned, if another ring is required to be made.

So the hand made jewellery piece will take hours or may be days to craft while casting it will take minutes for casting numerous identical pieces. In hand made jewellery the labor cost is a main factor. On casting, only the cleaning is required and nothing else and short time is spent in casting method.

For casting, in the jewellery trade the Lost Wax casting method is used as main method of casting. In this method, a master piece is prepared first and this master piece can be used to make unlimited copies of the jewellery item. In casting method large number of rings are made at one time but in hand made method only one piece is made at one time. So it can be said that the piece of handmade jewellery is stronger and heavier because of the techniques used like hammering and filling which make the piece hard and qualitative.

In casting sometimes the bubbles remains inside and missed by the manufacturer, which make it a less quality product and less durable. Nowadays this kind of problem can be easily controlled by highly sophisticated equipments but it could happen. The casting method can also be said a duplicating method by which a manufacturer copies number of rings of a piece.

So comparing both methods, the hand made piece of jewellery can be a unique thing and an expensive one. Casting method is cheaper and many people can enjoy the same product. Handmade jewellery is long lasting, durable and harder as compared to jewellery made with the casting method.

Jewelers who specialize in custom designing often use the lost wax casting method to create one-of-a-kind rings, charms, pendants, or other specialized items out of precious metals.

First the jeweler may sketch an idea on paper, especially if he or she is working with a client.  When the diagrammed sketch is approved, the jeweler then fashions an exact replica of the finished item in a soft, pliable wax.  The wax pattern, or maquette, is fitted with a stem called a sprue, which will create an exit for the wax when it is burned out.

This wax form is weighed to determine the amount of metal that will be needed.  It is then attached to a base and fitted with a tumbler that holds the mold material, which is plaster mixed with water to a cake batter consistency, called investment.  It must be free of bubbles before pouring into the tumbler, so it is placed in a vacuum to remove all the air.  The investment is poured into the tumbler and then taken to a kiln to have the wax burned out.

A jeweler’s centrifuge machine is the tool that injects the liquid metal into the mold.  The mold is taken from the kiln and placed in a holder that has a hollow arm attached to a cup that lines up with the hole in the mold. The pre-measured metal is placed in this small crucible, and then heated with a torch until it is liquid. 

The pin is then released on the centrifuge, and it spins rapidly around while the liquid metal is forced into the tumbler and mold. Once the spinning stops, the tumbler is removed from the centrifuge with tongs (it is extremely hot), dipped into cold water, and the plaster cracks and falls off of the metal inside.

At this point, the beautifully designed object created on paper does not even slightly resemble the blob of metal in the jeweler’s tongs.  This is because the base (or button) and the sprue are now metal like the rest of the design, and must be sawed and ground off with a jewelers’ Dremel tool, which is an instrument much like a dentist’s drill.

Much fine sanding and shaping is done with the Dremel and its attachments, and gradually the original design emerges.  Jewelers’ rouge puts a nice patina on the finish, and after much polishing, the piece is now ready for use.

Having a custom-made, jeweler-designed ring, pendant, charm, or other special item is something to be proud of, since it can define who you are, what your interests are, or what is important your life.

Have you ever wondered as you looked at a piece of gold jewelry just how it it was made. How did the jeweler start out with raw bulk product and end up with the finished product. Jewelery is created using many methods but the most common method is by the “lost wax” casting method. It was developed in ancient times and it is still used to this day, although modern tools are now used.

The reason that is is called lost wax is, because the object that is to be created is first sculpted out of wax to the exact specifications that the finished product is going to look like. After the wax sculpture is completed it is then encased in a silica encasement or in the case of jewelery it is then encased in plaster. Then after the plaster encasement has hardened and dried it is put into an oven or kiln. This will cause the wax to melt and burn out leaving its hollow image inside of the plaster encasement.

Then the plaster encasement with the hollow shape of the piece of jewelry is placed into a casting centrifuge which is a device that will use centrifugal force to drive molten gold down through an opening in the chunk of plaster where it will fill the hollow spot left by the wax melting out. After it has cooled the plaster is broken open to reveal a piece of gold jewelry where the wax sculpture once was.

Its the same technique that is used to create larger bronze sculptures, only with bronze it is done on a larger scale and the centrifugal caster isn’t used. The lost wax casting method was what was used to bring civilization out of the Iron Age and into the Bronze Age. In ancient times primitive metal smiths would use bees wax to shape objects such as axes and arrow heads. These was objects were then encased in clay and placed in the bottom of fire pits to burn off.