Howye all...long time no post!
I've been tied up lately, but I've got 3 3D Printers sitting at home now, and the brother has a furnace that he uses to melt & cat aluminium and steel !
DIY Aluminium casting is relatively common but steel casting is quite rare given how hard it is to get the temperatures up high enough for long enough to melt steel.
I'm thinking of doing a lost-PLA casting of inlet/exhaust manifolds. The process is; measure gaskets/bolt patterns, design and model manifolds, 3D print them, invest the 3D print in plaster of paris (or another investment material for steel), melt out the plastic print, and pour in the Aluminium/Steel, cool, and chip away the investment material to reveal a usable manifold.
The build area of the printers is 8" x 10" x 8", so the mani's would probably be modeled in two halves and glued together before the casting, but I don't see that being an issue.
Do ye think there'd be any demand for this? And does anyone have a gasket they can measure and send me so I can get the bolt pattern and port sizes right? It'd be an interesting project me thinks
I'd like to do up a nice inlet plenum for my CG10 for the craic
Doesn't need to be manifolds either, the same process can be used to make pretty much anything that can be 3D Printed.
I've been tied up lately, but I've got 3 3D Printers sitting at home now, and the brother has a furnace that he uses to melt & cat aluminium and steel !
DIY Aluminium casting is relatively common but steel casting is quite rare given how hard it is to get the temperatures up high enough for long enough to melt steel.
I'm thinking of doing a lost-PLA casting of inlet/exhaust manifolds. The process is; measure gaskets/bolt patterns, design and model manifolds, 3D print them, invest the 3D print in plaster of paris (or another investment material for steel), melt out the plastic print, and pour in the Aluminium/Steel, cool, and chip away the investment material to reveal a usable manifold.
The build area of the printers is 8" x 10" x 8", so the mani's would probably be modeled in two halves and glued together before the casting, but I don't see that being an issue.
Do ye think there'd be any demand for this? And does anyone have a gasket they can measure and send me so I can get the bolt pattern and port sizes right? It'd be an interesting project me thinks
I'd like to do up a nice inlet plenum for my CG10 for the craicDoesn't need to be manifolds either, the same process can be used to make pretty much anything that can be 3D Printed.
