Lost PLA casting: Take 1
I’ve been experimenting with some backyard sand casting, and have had the desire to try and cast a 3d-printed object. I’d heard you can do a “lost PLA” cast, where the molten aluminum vaporizes the printed item, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Long story short: Works… sort of. This is my first try, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but the results were far less than I wanted: No detail in the object, and not all the PLA totally melted: I printed the object with only 5% infill and 1 shell (to generate as little material as possible). Regardless, it does make a good conversation piece 😉 In the future I’m going to get better sand (finer grain, better clay binder) to help preserve the detail, and probably try for a real lost-wax solution (3d print a mold for the wax), or a true sand-cast where I remove the item to be printed and simply fill the void with metal.
The end result is (an attempt at) the logo for the company I work for, Sledgehammer Games (a sledgehammer head seemed something worth forging):
You can see on the left and right sides where I had to grind off the sprues.
Here’s a shot of my “flowerpot furnace” in action melting the aluminum for the project:
And one with the top removed, showing the red-hot crucible: