Trying to speed up my production time, this doesn't really speed things up, but it will keep me from burning so much wax up in the kiln ( which is not good for the elements) Steam dewaxer..
That's a good find, I've seen a few commercial deep fryers at the recycle shop that could be modified to do a similar job with some water to cover the heating element to generate steam.
I've sat the flasks over a pot of boiling water with another pot acting as a lid to keep the steam in for dewaxing. It worked just fine for a couple of flasks. This thing will hold 8 flasks.
Nothing beats a tool designed for the task, compared to making do with a similar machine. The chamber looks pretty large, will you have to make racks to hang the flask off?.
No they sit right on the screen on the bottom. Inside dimensions are 18" deep at the top, 12" wide and 10" high.
Very neat. Problem is the wax will be unusable without being refined in some way since water will get mixed into it. Ugh!
Yes, and also the more the wax is reused the further its original properties degrade. This is just to cut down on the amount of wax being burnt off in the furnace.
Gotcha. I'd like to find a viable way of removing the moisture from the wax so it can be reused multiple time. Seems its done with some vacuum fangled system.
Boiling point of water at X psi. Melting.point.of wax. Vacuum lowers the boiling point.... Yada yada yada... You get the point
Problem is, wax floats on the water, so how ya gonna boil off the water by vacuum if it's under the wax?????? But, I like the way you're thinking. I personally don't have much of an issue driving water off my wax. I get the wax to around 200 and let it cool. After it's hard, I stick a hot screwdriver down the side wall of the pot and pull it out. I tip the pot over and the water flows out beneath the hard wax. I repeat this a few times and the water is gone. I toss in some fresh wax and get back to work. With my boil out method, I have some serious water that gets mixed in my wax. After I boil out, I cover the pot and leave it outside overnight. I then pick off the chunk of wax off the top the next day and the process starts.
The normal way of dealing with issues like that would be to have a cold trap between the vacuum chamber and pump, any wax or water vapour would condense in the trap rather than the pump.
I think I would just put it in my wax injector and draw a vacuum on it instead of presserizing it. They vacuum a/c systems before they are charged to draw out any moisture. This really isn't any different. I don't typically reuse my wax.
Perhaps mill the used wax - grind it up - and then pull a vacuum? (That wax is Spendy enough that I'd try to reuse it.)
Going to give the dewaxer a test run tomorrow. This thing should hold 12 flasks, which is great. I typically have $100.00 worth of castings in a 4x8 flask, so to pull off 12 a day.. not too shabby....
