Wax Fillets

[Pipescs]

Your right about the draft angle. I used three and can tell five would have made life easier at this point.

[Pipescs]

Came in from work to find a box from Freeman's Foundry Supply.

They had told me it would take two weeks as it had to be produced prior to shipping.

I had ordered what I thought was a box of twenty four inch pieces of filleted material but what came was a boxed spool of 1/16" wax materiel and a shapping tool.

It turns out it is much easer to work with than even Trainmans Video makes it appear. I used an old kerosene lamp for heat and the entire filleting effort this afternoon took less than thirty minutes.

Just keep the tool in and out of the flame every few inches and work out the bumps. Curves were a breeze.

[hammermill]

congrats nice to see it was so simple a solution.

[Pipescs]

The main reason I wanted to learn about the material was the fact that my journal box pattern would not pull clean from the sand. Fender recommended I put an inside fillet to keep the sand from "Keying" into the corners causing the tear out. I have tried almost a dozen attempts to make the mold and only one came out usable.

It took around thirty minutes to clean off the graphite from the pattern and wax it.

My very first attempt went well so I have high hopes this solved the problem.

Another area I am having problems with is getting a consistant metal flow in the Trailing Truck Arms.

The metal was cooling too quickly due to the thin sections of the long pattern. It would work intermittenly but from time to time have bad spots.

I made the decision to thicken up the base of the pattern by adding a wood layer into the bottom of the beam making it twice as thick.


This will hopefully help with the bronze cooling as it flows.

I am hoping the enlarged fillets will help with the bronze going into the thin web area.

[Pipescs]

OH WELL. Lessons Learned.

In my excitement of getting the fillets to work in helping with the corner tearout of the sand I missed the fact that the mold needs vent or popoffs in the thin areas that are dead ends about half way up the casting when it is being poured.


In the first attempt at this part I had popoffs on all three winged or webbed areas. Had no problem with flow into the thin areas.

On this one I pushed a one eighth diameter brass wire on the left and right wing piece but totally forgot the top section. as you can see the metal just stopped and set up.

I used a pyrometer and poured at 2000 degrees both times. The only differnce is the second attemp used Yellow brass where the first was silicon bronze. Not sure this could have been the problem as the two side wings worked fine with the two popoffs in the corners.

Really like the larger fillets though.

OH well back to the mold bench and the part goes into the next melt.

[RCW]

Charlie:

Thanks for starting this thread.

I noticed that Freeman had some videos. I watched one of these and it was instructive, so I will probably watch others. I suspect many of you would enjoy at least some of these.
http://www.freemansupply.com/video.htm

Feedback anyone?

Bob

[Pipescs]

The videos are great but you fill find this is just about idiot proof when you try it. If you get the ball a little too hot you just wait a few seconds to let it cool down. You learn by the feel of it very quickly to get good results.