How do you melt wax?

David Lemmon the sculptor does this very think to keep his clay slightly warm so it works easier.

 

We always just called them incubators.

They use a water filled jacket to keep the heat at a specific level. I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to build and equip it with aquarium heaters for temperature control.

 

I would offer another way to melt wax that I have been using for a number of yours. I have a cut off aluminum fire extinguisher from the scrap yard in a simple stand with a ball valve. I use a simple plumbers torch to heat the vessel and stir with a wood rod. The aluminum body holds the heat for a very long time and I can control the rate of flow out with the ball valve. You can also just use a round, flat block of wood, set on top of the liquid wax to push the flow into a silicone mold. Sorry for the bad quality of the picture. Should have used a piece of white card stock for a background!

 

I've just used a hot plate with a 1-5 temp dial and a steel saucepan for years. Just make sure you position the pot slightly to the side if you are melting the wax from solid after it's cooled. Once you have a channel to the bottom of the pan, pretty much no explosion risk. It does smoke a bit for the first (I'm messy when making waxes and drip it everywhere inc on the hot plate) few mins but then evens out and doesn't smoke even if I have it on for an hr or more. My operation is small though so depends on what you're doing but this has always worked for me. that being said I don't make sprues currently but may have to adjust things a bit when I get there, especially if I am making my own rolling wax, not sure on this yet.

Other tips - any oiled surface will allow you to peel off the wax if you make a spill - if it gets on concrete it's kinda f*cked and you'd need to filter it (sieve) to get the concrete bits out. I use old bits of molding rubber, mica tops, foil sheet, all sorts and oil it up with veg oil or similar. When I did a short stint in a prof foundry they had a huge rubber sheet which all the larger wax pulls were done on. Lots of spills but no waste!

 

What are you melting the wax for? Pouring into rubber molds?

This is the setup Jason mentioned. Works for me.